Oh, today’s musing was exceptional! The remote is beyond our pay grade also, and occasional flatulence has become something to chuckle about. I remember, years ago, listening to the musical accompaniment when my great-aunt rose from her chair and hoping that never happened to me…..ha!
I’m with you on Moby-Dick. Or was, until I finally got around to reading it sometime last year. Surprisingly funny book, once you recognize the snark. Also, I can now be even more of a pain in the ass by incessantly pointing out the hyphen. As the kids say, good times.
While analyzing the words of one candidate, you might take the time to find a little montage of Biden. News flash- Biden makes Trump look like Churchill. The “glass house” thing and “not throwing stones” comes to mind. Probably not a good strategy on your part, as is the assertion that Biden is a pious Catholic. Laughable. One word for you- Abortion. On demand in Biden’s world. He may personally be against it but he sure is great at enabling it.
Thomas, you are tireless and you are tiresome. I recommend you read about the rise of National Socialism in Germany, 1932. There are so many parallels. And do look up the transcript of the speech in Rome and read it aloud to yourself and see how it sounds. I didn't comment on Biden's piety, I observed that he'd be in church hearing about the Resurrection. When it comes to abortion, the people democratically will have their say.
Nice, GK. A calm, rational putdown of a typical tRumpist false equivalency. While it’s true one can catch more flies with honey than vinegar, changing the closed mind of a propagandized MAGAt is tiring and, usually, futile. Still, you deserve an “A” for both your diplomacy and effort.
Garrison, I never fire the first shot. When you are blatantly unfair to the man, I will point it out. I was a History major in school and I know a fair amount about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. That comparison on your part doesn’t even warrant a reply as it is so insipid. Be fair to the man and speak honestly about the Biden Administration and you’ll never hear from me. I like your writing until you attack DJT unfairly. There is a reason Biden is so unpopular (even among Dems), give that a little time please.
Mr. Cook, you are beyond the possibility of discussion. Call it insanity or call it evil, you fully embrace it, and I pray that our children will not have to endure the consequences. Honestly I have nothing to say to you. I don't see a light burning anywhere there.
You may know a fair amount about Hitler and the Nazis, but apparently not enough to have learned anything and come to some applicable conclusions. What a waste of an education.
It is hard to be fair to a man who has never shown an ounce of empathy for anyone but people who are more powerful than he is. And shows astounding disrespect for any and all norms and for common decency. Who is a convicted sex offender and an unceasing liar. Who has no core beliefs and will use your stand against abortion as a tool to manipulate you. And who, as Mr. Keillor noted, can’t put together a rational sentence without a teleprompter. And actually, not even then. Check out Biden’s State of the Union address and then try to tell me that Trump looks like Churchill in comparison. You are just damn silly.
Whether your assertion that "Biden is so unpopular (even among Dems) is accurate or not has no relevance whatsoever to the absolute fact that your favored "candidate" is actually a con-man, a criminal, the head of an organized crime family, a cheater, liar, adulterer, scofflaw, an un-American treasonous demagogue, a sociopathic egomaniac.... just for starters.
Treat trump unfairly? Surely you jest. The man is beyond help as a viable citizen of the world let alone candidate for the presidency. Dunce is too weak a word for the state of his intellect. Next.
While Biden does have the occasional gaff and dead air, The Donald's words are chosen and deliberate. If DT were sitting in a sandbox with a bunch of 10 year olds, his words would be fully understood and acceptable. The other kids would likely throw him out of the sandbox though.
Some people have their Heads so buried in the 'sand' and therefore from the light, Thomas, that they will never see what has been happening around them, and the decades long destruction, due to their chosen party apparatchiks evil and will become the 1st of the 'useful idiots (Stalinism)' to be eliminated by their leaders.
What is wrong with us? This is some pretty aggressive and vile language being exchanged here. The rhetoric that is being exchanged here is evidence that we've seemed to have lost all respect for another. This should not and cannot continue lest we lose the basic human decency for one another that originally brought us together as ONE NATION. There are valid points made on both sides here. But with the vitriol that is being exchanged, I do believe that understanding is neither being facilitated nor respected.
Thank you for your brief commentary on you-know-who's "speech." Someone should compile a book of all the similarly inane, childish, and just plain stupid things he's said. I guess what frightens me the most is that nearly 47% of the voting public in this country think it's perfectly okay and this dunderhead is fit to lead one of the world's most influential countries. I'm happy that you're happy, Garrison, but this makes me not happy.
Mr. Trump's lack of eloquence may itself speak volumes about the intellectual decline of our country. Some say that's the way our "leaders" want it; a dumbed-down populace that, "... can't sit around the kitchen table and discuss how badly they've been screwed by their 'owners' that threw them overboard thirty [now fourty five] f*cking years ago" (George Carlin). On the other hand, others see Trump as an unfortunate, distorted anomaly. A temporary aberration in an otherwise functioning, however imperfect, democratic republic.
Mr. Keillor, your image of President Lincoln is apropos. I wasn't paying much attention in high school, an attestation to my own stupidity and lack of acumen so I didn't learn this until just recently rather late in life: President Lincoln held the Union together, but he did so not just for America, but much more so for the entire world. Mr. Lincoln not only showed the world, but he proved to the world that a nation, "...of the people, by the people, and for the people..." could and would prevail.
Before Mr. Lincoln's example of these United States as a successful democratic republic, with just a few minor exceptions in ancient Greece and classical Rome, democracy was a vanishingly rare geo-political anomaly. Tyrants and despots who abused their populace dominated and ruled all over the world. It was Mr. Lincoln who stood firm, and by his actions (which resulted in the death of over 600,000 young American men, sadly) showed the world that people could govern themselves and that nations, "of the people, by the people, and for the people...shall not perish from this earth."
To paraphrase President Lincoln: If I have to free all of the slaves to preserve the Union I will do so. If I have to free some of the slave to preserve the Union I will do so; and if I must free none of the slaves to preserve the Union, I will do so. But above all else, the Union must and will prevail.
And so to this day democratic republics, due to Lincoln's perseverance, prevail not just here in America but throughout the world, a few anomalous, distorted nation-states abused by their leaders notwithstanding, such as North Korea and Myanmar.
Thus when the "tangerine tinted tyrant" threatens to turn this nation of Lincoln and his democratic legacy into his own personal fiefdom "from day one" with his personal cronies and henchmen packed into federal administrative jobs, the American people need to say, "Enough!"
As President Lincoln, a truly eloquent and wise man, so unlike Trump said, "This nation of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth..."
Let's not give Trump another chance to destroy our precious democratic-republic "of the people, by the people, for the people..." as imperfect as we have been in implementing that. It is still the country of "we the people." Without Trump we can keep it that way.
I believe it was Chris Hedges who said Melville's "Moby Dick" was a long comment on the chaotic expansion of the country (the United States) itself.
Melville had witnessed our war against Mexico and our enormous land grab of the south west as President Polk implimented John Quincy Adam's "Manifest Destiny" or the "Monroe Doctrine" with a fervor and a vengeance. (James Monroe who devised the doctrine was President John Quincy Adams' Secretary of State.)
So perhaps "Moby Dick" was an elaborate, book length metaphor about America. I assume captian Ahab was a representation of the leader ship of the young nation careening wildly in his (their) maniacal quest for the "white whale" (Manifest Destiny) while he, Ahab (literally) pulled everything and everyone around him into the vortex as the Pequod (the United States?) went down.
Could Melville have been so prescient as to see the condition of the U.S. today? As an arrogantly expansionist nation even back then in 1848, perhaps he could. With China, Russia and their BRIC allies overtaking the G7 trade bloc threatening to overthrow the U.S.-Nato hegemony that has prevailed for 75 years? Is the United States now "going down" as the Pequod went down, smashed to splinters by the White Whale (the BRIC trade bloc).
Perhaps Melville could see that a young nation with the arrogant leadership of America (captian Ahab) was bound and destined to someday "dig its own grave" and sink itself? Just as Ahab sank the Pequod.
And is now Melville's prescience coming to fruition? The result of the hubris that derives from arrogance. (As the classical Greek playwrights understood it.) As the arrogant and vengeful Ahab went down taking the Pequod and her crew with him, is the arrogant United States now "going down", too?
Who will be our Ishmael to tell our story? Perhaps you, dear reader? Perhaps you...
Can't wait to hear what you think of "Melville's finest". I finally borrowed the e-book from the NY Public and dove in expecting greatness. Instead I got, for the most part, a several hundred page treatise on whales, whaling, whaling boats and MORE. Very little was what I would call a story, and the famous Queequeg? Let's just say that his usefulness to protagonist and author just sort of fades away. There's much more I could say but I won't until you made your own voyage of discovery. Hopefully, we can talk more then.
Garrison, I will be 85 in August. Last month after breaking my wrist playing ice hockey I decided it was time to hang up my skates. I first played in a hockey rink with walls (outside) at Carleton College in 1957 and have been at it ever since. I'm part of the SW Florida Blue Zone project, wrote a book Health, Happiness, and Hope about my longevity secrets (available on Amazon), flew for Delta Airlines for 25 years after 5 years in the Navy. Got a DMin degree at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA and serve as a volunteer chaplain at our local hospital. I'm all in for RFK with the motto: Avoid dystopia, Elect Kennedy. and only a nation of codependents would elect a narcissist as president! Namaste!
Voting for RFK or any other third party candidate is, basically, voting for Trump. If you want an orange-haired dictator with loose screws as president, go ahead.
Me, I’m voting for an 81 year old, the sharp, life-long stuttering, and very competent Biden.
Know this Garrison. We/I love the references to that person who even our neighbor, the Baptist Minister says he can prove to this day is the dully elected President of the United States of America. Without those inserts in your mostly daily talks give us great hope. Thanks, again and again. RR
Melville at Carleton. The only failing grade I got at Carleton in 1956 was because I failed to worship at the altar of Melville where my literature professor worshipped. When asked to write an essay of the hidden secret of life hidden in the pages of Moby Dick, I had the temerity to say I didn't think Melville had the secret of life. and if he did he should just come out and say it!
As a rare born again at Carleton, I held a voluntary Bible study with friends who challenged me: "Bronson we like you, but how can you worship a God to bribes you with heaven and threatens to burn you forever if you don't get in line?" Find the answer in a book I wrote 50 years later dedicated to Larry King who often had a similar question for squirming evangelical leaders. It's called How to Get to Heaven, or ebook version How to Fly to Heaven. Frankie Schaeffer said it is the book he would have written if he had written on the topic which includes conditional immortality or conditionalism supported by John Stott and most openist theologians of which I am a part.
Your clever dig is noted, John. Your trophy's hanging. Anyone that's paying attention is obsessed with watching the bull in a China shop. It's how we deal with the thought of...
I’ve loved Moby Dick since I read it in high school. I also took my Senior seminar class at Cal on Melville. I’m nearly 79 and have been reading it for the 4th time, with about 80 pages to go. I love Melville’s musings on human nature through narrator Ishmael. Anyone who thinks the book is about whaling is missing the boat. You could skip a lot of the whaling details and have a wonderful read. Ahab, the 3 mates, the 3 harpooneers - all great character studies. Take your time and enjoy it.
Yeah,
You're good
That's why I keep reading you
Oh, today’s musing was exceptional! The remote is beyond our pay grade also, and occasional flatulence has become something to chuckle about. I remember, years ago, listening to the musical accompaniment when my great-aunt rose from her chair and hoping that never happened to me…..ha!
I’m with you on Moby-Dick. Or was, until I finally got around to reading it sometime last year. Surprisingly funny book, once you recognize the snark. Also, I can now be even more of a pain in the ass by incessantly pointing out the hyphen. As the kids say, good times.
While analyzing the words of one candidate, you might take the time to find a little montage of Biden. News flash- Biden makes Trump look like Churchill. The “glass house” thing and “not throwing stones” comes to mind. Probably not a good strategy on your part, as is the assertion that Biden is a pious Catholic. Laughable. One word for you- Abortion. On demand in Biden’s world. He may personally be against it but he sure is great at enabling it.
Thomas, you are tireless and you are tiresome. I recommend you read about the rise of National Socialism in Germany, 1932. There are so many parallels. And do look up the transcript of the speech in Rome and read it aloud to yourself and see how it sounds. I didn't comment on Biden's piety, I observed that he'd be in church hearing about the Resurrection. When it comes to abortion, the people democratically will have their say.
Nice, GK. A calm, rational putdown of a typical tRumpist false equivalency. While it’s true one can catch more flies with honey than vinegar, changing the closed mind of a propagandized MAGAt is tiring and, usually, futile. Still, you deserve an “A” for both your diplomacy and effort.
Garrison, I never fire the first shot. When you are blatantly unfair to the man, I will point it out. I was a History major in school and I know a fair amount about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. That comparison on your part doesn’t even warrant a reply as it is so insipid. Be fair to the man and speak honestly about the Biden Administration and you’ll never hear from me. I like your writing until you attack DJT unfairly. There is a reason Biden is so unpopular (even among Dems), give that a little time please.
Mr. Cook, you are beyond the possibility of discussion. Call it insanity or call it evil, you fully embrace it, and I pray that our children will not have to endure the consequences. Honestly I have nothing to say to you. I don't see a light burning anywhere there.
If we are heading toward Nazism, I’ll remind you who’s President now…
I have no idea whatsoever what youre trying to say.
I believe the current driver towards nazism would be the person whose hand currently hold the reins…
You may know a fair amount about Hitler and the Nazis, but apparently not enough to have learned anything and come to some applicable conclusions. What a waste of an education.
It is hard to be fair to a man who has never shown an ounce of empathy for anyone but people who are more powerful than he is. And shows astounding disrespect for any and all norms and for common decency. Who is a convicted sex offender and an unceasing liar. Who has no core beliefs and will use your stand against abortion as a tool to manipulate you. And who, as Mr. Keillor noted, can’t put together a rational sentence without a teleprompter. And actually, not even then. Check out Biden’s State of the Union address and then try to tell me that Trump looks like Churchill in comparison. You are just damn silly.
It is a losing game to be fair to a man who sees fairness as weakness and will never reciprocate.
Whether your assertion that "Biden is so unpopular (even among Dems) is accurate or not has no relevance whatsoever to the absolute fact that your favored "candidate" is actually a con-man, a criminal, the head of an organized crime family, a cheater, liar, adulterer, scofflaw, an un-American treasonous demagogue, a sociopathic egomaniac.... just for starters.
Treat trump unfairly? Surely you jest. The man is beyond help as a viable citizen of the world let alone candidate for the presidency. Dunce is too weak a word for the state of his intellect. Next.
While Biden does have the occasional gaff and dead air, The Donald's words are chosen and deliberate. If DT were sitting in a sandbox with a bunch of 10 year olds, his words would be fully understood and acceptable. The other kids would likely throw him out of the sandbox though.
Some people have their Heads so buried in the 'sand' and therefore from the light, Thomas, that they will never see what has been happening around them, and the decades long destruction, due to their chosen party apparatchiks evil and will become the 1st of the 'useful idiots (Stalinism)' to be eliminated by their leaders.
What is wrong with us? This is some pretty aggressive and vile language being exchanged here. The rhetoric that is being exchanged here is evidence that we've seemed to have lost all respect for another. This should not and cannot continue lest we lose the basic human decency for one another that originally brought us together as ONE NATION. There are valid points made on both sides here. But with the vitriol that is being exchanged, I do believe that understanding is neither being facilitated nor respected.
Thank you for your brief commentary on you-know-who's "speech." Someone should compile a book of all the similarly inane, childish, and just plain stupid things he's said. I guess what frightens me the most is that nearly 47% of the voting public in this country think it's perfectly okay and this dunderhead is fit to lead one of the world's most influential countries. I'm happy that you're happy, Garrison, but this makes me not happy.
Mr. Trump's lack of eloquence may itself speak volumes about the intellectual decline of our country. Some say that's the way our "leaders" want it; a dumbed-down populace that, "... can't sit around the kitchen table and discuss how badly they've been screwed by their 'owners' that threw them overboard thirty [now fourty five] f*cking years ago" (George Carlin). On the other hand, others see Trump as an unfortunate, distorted anomaly. A temporary aberration in an otherwise functioning, however imperfect, democratic republic.
Mr. Keillor, your image of President Lincoln is apropos. I wasn't paying much attention in high school, an attestation to my own stupidity and lack of acumen so I didn't learn this until just recently rather late in life: President Lincoln held the Union together, but he did so not just for America, but much more so for the entire world. Mr. Lincoln not only showed the world, but he proved to the world that a nation, "...of the people, by the people, and for the people..." could and would prevail.
Before Mr. Lincoln's example of these United States as a successful democratic republic, with just a few minor exceptions in ancient Greece and classical Rome, democracy was a vanishingly rare geo-political anomaly. Tyrants and despots who abused their populace dominated and ruled all over the world. It was Mr. Lincoln who stood firm, and by his actions (which resulted in the death of over 600,000 young American men, sadly) showed the world that people could govern themselves and that nations, "of the people, by the people, and for the people...shall not perish from this earth."
To paraphrase President Lincoln: If I have to free all of the slaves to preserve the Union I will do so. If I have to free some of the slave to preserve the Union I will do so; and if I must free none of the slaves to preserve the Union, I will do so. But above all else, the Union must and will prevail.
And so to this day democratic republics, due to Lincoln's perseverance, prevail not just here in America but throughout the world, a few anomalous, distorted nation-states abused by their leaders notwithstanding, such as North Korea and Myanmar.
Thus when the "tangerine tinted tyrant" threatens to turn this nation of Lincoln and his democratic legacy into his own personal fiefdom "from day one" with his personal cronies and henchmen packed into federal administrative jobs, the American people need to say, "Enough!"
As President Lincoln, a truly eloquent and wise man, so unlike Trump said, "This nation of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth..."
Let's not give Trump another chance to destroy our precious democratic-republic "of the people, by the people, for the people..." as imperfect as we have been in implementing that. It is still the country of "we the people." Without Trump we can keep it that way.
Wow! I'm in good company! I've tried so many times to read Moby Dick! I thought there must be something wrong with me that I couldn't get into it!
I believe it was Chris Hedges who said Melville's "Moby Dick" was a long comment on the chaotic expansion of the country (the United States) itself.
Melville had witnessed our war against Mexico and our enormous land grab of the south west as President Polk implimented John Quincy Adam's "Manifest Destiny" or the "Monroe Doctrine" with a fervor and a vengeance. (James Monroe who devised the doctrine was President John Quincy Adams' Secretary of State.)
So perhaps "Moby Dick" was an elaborate, book length metaphor about America. I assume captian Ahab was a representation of the leader ship of the young nation careening wildly in his (their) maniacal quest for the "white whale" (Manifest Destiny) while he, Ahab (literally) pulled everything and everyone around him into the vortex as the Pequod (the United States?) went down.
Could Melville have been so prescient as to see the condition of the U.S. today? As an arrogantly expansionist nation even back then in 1848, perhaps he could. With China, Russia and their BRIC allies overtaking the G7 trade bloc threatening to overthrow the U.S.-Nato hegemony that has prevailed for 75 years? Is the United States now "going down" as the Pequod went down, smashed to splinters by the White Whale (the BRIC trade bloc).
Perhaps Melville could see that a young nation with the arrogant leadership of America (captian Ahab) was bound and destined to someday "dig its own grave" and sink itself? Just as Ahab sank the Pequod.
And is now Melville's prescience coming to fruition? The result of the hubris that derives from arrogance. (As the classical Greek playwrights understood it.) As the arrogant and vengeful Ahab went down taking the Pequod and her crew with him, is the arrogant United States now "going down", too?
Who will be our Ishmael to tell our story? Perhaps you, dear reader? Perhaps you...
Me too - See my comment above!
Can't wait to hear what you think of "Melville's finest". I finally borrowed the e-book from the NY Public and dove in expecting greatness. Instead I got, for the most part, a several hundred page treatise on whales, whaling, whaling boats and MORE. Very little was what I would call a story, and the famous Queequeg? Let's just say that his usefulness to protagonist and author just sort of fades away. There's much more I could say but I won't until you made your own voyage of discovery. Hopefully, we can talk more then.
Garrison, I will be 85 in August. Last month after breaking my wrist playing ice hockey I decided it was time to hang up my skates. I first played in a hockey rink with walls (outside) at Carleton College in 1957 and have been at it ever since. I'm part of the SW Florida Blue Zone project, wrote a book Health, Happiness, and Hope about my longevity secrets (available on Amazon), flew for Delta Airlines for 25 years after 5 years in the Navy. Got a DMin degree at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA and serve as a volunteer chaplain at our local hospital. I'm all in for RFK with the motto: Avoid dystopia, Elect Kennedy. and only a nation of codependents would elect a narcissist as president! Namaste!
Voting for RFK or any other third party candidate is, basically, voting for Trump. If you want an orange-haired dictator with loose screws as president, go ahead.
Me, I’m voting for an 81 year old, the sharp, life-long stuttering, and very competent Biden.
If Mike Johnson experienced flatulence, just imagine what Nancy Pelosi had to endure.
This was SO excellent! Made my day end with great laughter. Thank you!
Know this Garrison. We/I love the references to that person who even our neighbor, the Baptist Minister says he can prove to this day is the dully elected President of the United States of America. Without those inserts in your mostly daily talks give us great hope. Thanks, again and again. RR
Melville at Carleton. The only failing grade I got at Carleton in 1956 was because I failed to worship at the altar of Melville where my literature professor worshipped. When asked to write an essay of the hidden secret of life hidden in the pages of Moby Dick, I had the temerity to say I didn't think Melville had the secret of life. and if he did he should just come out and say it!
As a rare born again at Carleton, I held a voluntary Bible study with friends who challenged me: "Bronson we like you, but how can you worship a God to bribes you with heaven and threatens to burn you forever if you don't get in line?" Find the answer in a book I wrote 50 years later dedicated to Larry King who often had a similar question for squirming evangelical leaders. It's called How to Get to Heaven, or ebook version How to Fly to Heaven. Frankie Schaeffer said it is the book he would have written if he had written on the topic which includes conditional immortality or conditionalism supported by John Stott and most openist theologians of which I am a part.
I beginning to think you are obsessed with the orange man. But I still like your humor. My father was from northwest Minnesota, so I get it
Your clever dig is noted, John. Your trophy's hanging. Anyone that's paying attention is obsessed with watching the bull in a China shop. It's how we deal with the thought of...
I’ve loved Moby Dick since I read it in high school. I also took my Senior seminar class at Cal on Melville. I’m nearly 79 and have been reading it for the 4th time, with about 80 pages to go. I love Melville’s musings on human nature through narrator Ishmael. Anyone who thinks the book is about whaling is missing the boat. You could skip a lot of the whaling details and have a wonderful read. Ahab, the 3 mates, the 3 harpooneers - all great character studies. Take your time and enjoy it.