FreeThinke

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

A Liberal Writes an Open Letter to Friends and Former Classmates.

A Conservative-Libertarian Responds.

An Exchange Ensues.

Libby Writes:

Friends:

This is chiefly intended for FreeThine as he is, to my knowledge, our only self-identified Republican and because, even though we differ politically, I genuinely respect him as a well-meaning person of good character and integrity.

I'm concerned about the Republican Party. I'm sure you think, what business is it of his? He's a damned democrat! That's true and maybe it isn't my affair, but I do worry. and for quite selfish reasons.

For my whole life, the Republican Party has been a reliable counterweight to the Democrats. They were predictable and kind of boring. They stood for things ––things like fiscal prudence and a strong military, they were pro-business, and they believed in mainstream American ideals like free enterprise, separation of church and state, and economic opportunity for all. Like 'em or not, you knew where they stood.

But today, and particularly in the present nomination process, it feels as if the GOP is coming unraveled. The candidates don't seem to have an answer to Donald Trump, and they are espousing wild ideas like building a fence between the US and Canada, forcibly deporting 11 million undocumented aliens, and bombing Iran. Long-time leaders, principled men like Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, have been pushed to the curb, while vacuous airheads like Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, and that goober Mike Huckabee seize center stage. If the party were a psychiatric patient, I'd say it was "decompensating."

And it's not just the primaries. During the entirety of the Obama presidency, the Republican Party was never able to articulate a really coherent philosophy of its own or develop any real legislative agenda. It was as if just saying "no" to Obama and the Democrats was enough. Now, while they hold majorities in both houses, they are still playing defense while Obama goes his merry way.

I'm sure many Democrats look at the Republicans' predicament with glee. I don't. It says to me that the Democrats are probably every bit as vulnerable to similar excesses –– especially without strong, viable opposition. There is even the possibility that one of these nuts could win and then we'd all be in the soup!

So, I'd be interested in both of your perspectives. Can the GOP get on a more even keel. Are these extremist candidates just "flashes in the pan". Let's try to go easy on the partisanship and just understand one another a little better. Is this possible?

Respectfully yours,

Libby

FreeThinke Responds

Oh Boy! PHEW! First, let me say I agree with much of your concern, Libby. The GOP in my never humble opinion has been held hostage since Ronald Reagan left office by a corrupt, out-of-touch cabal of deadhead elitists who not-so-secretly favor the the eventual establishment of a One World Government run as a quasi-Oligarchy by their august selves, of course. These elites aka RINOS run the party's business to suit themselves and their cronies while completely ignoring the fervently expressed desires and needs of those who are supposed to be their constituents. The GOP today is clearly split into two irreconcilable camps.

Republicans are not dissimilar to way Jews have been known to characterize themselves when accused of thinking as a "bloc." Ask two Republicans what they think of a particular issue and you're likely to get five different opinions. ;-)

I cannot say, however, that I am concerned solely about the Republican side of the aisle. The Democrats too appear to be edging closer and closer to disarray. Mrs. H. Rodham Clinton appears to be less than an ideal candidate to put it mildly. Her troubles with what-appears-to-be extra-legal, illegal or unethical conduct has opened the way for the unlikely ascendance of 73-year-old Bernie Sanders, a one-time classic Red Diaper Baby, who despite being an avowed, unabashed Socialist –– a once-unthinkable political identity to which most Democrats refuse to admit –– is now in a statistical dead heat with H. Rodham Clinton. (!)

Enter Vice President Joe Biden, who happens to have been born in 1941 along with a number of others with whom I've been closely associated. ;-) Joe is an affable guy who was my senator for 23 years when I lived in Delaware. He was always ready to lend a helping hand to "little people" with problems. I saw him in action in this regard on more than one occasion, and have to say I was favorably impressed by his compassion and by the efficacy of his response in dealing with myriad little matters that adversely affected the lives of rank and file Delawareans. As a statesman on the international front, however, I was less impressed. and always felt very frankly that he was out of his depth.

Martin O'Malley? A good looking man with an impressive set of muscles who sings in a Rock 'n Roll Band now and then. He's not gaining any traction in this contest, however. Does anyone on your side of the aisle seriously believe he should?

And now to the BIG TUREEN: Friends, former Classmates and Countrymen, in my opinion we already are "in the soup," and it's threatening to boil over any minute. With 94-million Americans unemployed –– apparently a record –– and a 2300-point drop in the Dow these past few weeks, uncontrolled illegal immigration at epidemic proportions, a determination to give a hideous rogue state like Iran, whose leaders promise "DEATH to AMERICA" and openly vow to ANNIHILATE ISRAEL, $150,000,000.00 (one-hundred-fifty billion dollars!) appears to me to give them carte blanche to perpetrate greater, more powerful terrorist activities than ever.

The Middle East, admittedly an eternal trouble spot, is now almost totally destabilized. It has become a seething cauldron of violence and mass destruction verging on complete anarchy. So now we see teeming hordes of desperate refugees seeking asylum and threatening to overburden beleaguered European countries who thanks to decades of misguided notions of altruism and fiscal mismanagement are having one sweet son-of-a-bitch of a time taking care of their own people as it is.

To add to the cheery good news. Bubonic Plague (The Black Death that killed half the population of Europe in the Middle Ages) has reared its ugly head once again in Arizona of all places.

Literacy is down. Ignorance is up. Etiquette is a quaint archaic term most today don't recognize, and public taste is deplorable.

Our problems have little to do with party politics. A new term (to me) has recently emerged: The UNIPARTY. Senator Cruz calls it The Washington Cartel.

Most Republicans feel betrayed by those they worked hard to elect to congress. We've seen two huge victories for the GOP in the recent elections, but you'd never know it from the pusillanimity and sheer stupidity exhibited by the supposedly victorious party.

Is it any wonder a boorishly irreverent, apparently fearless would-be demagogue with a Rock Star personality like Donald Trump has captured so much favorable attention? In case you hadn't noticed The People are fed up, sick and tired with an insolent, unresponsive ESTABLISHMENT that fairly REEKS of corruption.

On a more positive note I find myself attracted to Dr. Carson, because of his terrific background, and because he seems to be the Anti-Trump. He's quiet, dignified, respectful, kindly, very witty, and highly intelligent. I am encouraged to see him running second to Trump in most polls.

More than enough for now, I'm sure. Aren't you glad you asked for my opinion?

};-)>

FreeThinke

Libby Answers:

Dear, FreeThinke,

I agree with many of your points. I think we both see a beleaguered middle class as being central to today's roiling political scene. But I do take exception to a few of your assertions: it is my understanding that the unemployment rate (5.5%) is now at levels of early in the GW Bush era. Also, illegal immigration is down –– significantly. According to the Department of Homeland Security, illegal immigration has fallen to its lowest level in at least two decades. The Pew Research Center says the nation’s population of illegal immigrants, which more than tripled, to 12.2 million, between 1990 and 2007, has since dropped by about 1 million. Over 600,000 illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America were kicked out last year! So all this stuff about our being overrun by illegal aliens is bullshit. Clear and simple! It's the crap that Trump is putting out to make us all shit in our knickers. And as to the Dow, if you can tell why it's down or up, more power to you. More likely the current crash started with the Chinese than with anything domestic.

As to Iran, I strongly disagree that our being more truculent is going to solve anything. Iran has been pledging the annihilation of Israel for decades. As best as I can tell, it's empty rhetoric. Garbage put out for domestic consumption. Nothing more. Israel has the wherewithal, atomic and otherwise, to defend herself and much, much more. Also, people are talking about the 150 billion dollars Iran will be getting like it's a gift. It's not a gift. It's their money –– their assets that we and our global partners froze. Did we really think we were going to keep it? I know Netanyahu would like to marginalize Iran and keep it as weak as possible. But I really don't think this is in the best interests of a stable Middle East or even in the long-term interests of Israel. Remember when France tried to keep us from invading Iraq? Remember all that stuff about not eating French fries? Well, sometimes the best thing an ally can do is to tell you when you shouldn't go to war –– not offering to hold your coat as you get your ass kicked. As strong as our relationship has been and will continue to be, there are times when we can't just go along with Israeli positions. There are lots of people inside Israel and lots of Jews here in America whom I think would agree with me.

Frankly, I am thrilled that we have an administration that is looking for peaceful solutions to our problems, and I really do think the terms of the treaty are extremely tight. It will be very difficult for the Iranians to cheat and if they try to we can re-impose sanctions. Isn't this a hell of a lot better than trying to solve problems with force? Is this weakness on our part? Thinking we could solve the regions' problems with force has been a disastrous approach. It has undermined whatever stability there was in the region.

Libby

FreeThinke’s Second Response

I'm not at all sure we can trust the statistics generated either by government agencies or avowedly liberal publications, Libby.

Isn't it a bit too much like trusting the FOX to tell us the whole truth and nothing but the truth about his carryings on on the HENHOUSE?

"Figures may not lie, but liars always figure."

I don't trust numbers generated by avowedly conservative sources either. Instead, I go along with Mark Twain who famously said, "There are lies, God-damned lies, and then there are STATISTICS!"

Here's more Twain to cheer you up and rile you simultaneously:

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

~ Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

"It is the foreign element that commits our crimes. There is no native criminal class except Congress."

! More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927

"Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues."

~ Notebook, 1868

"I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman."

~ "Foster's Case," New York Tribune, 10 March 1873

Cordially,

FreeThinke

There’s still more, but first we’d like to hear what you think –– not of the candidates so much –– but of this particular exchange. If you were in the loop, what would you say to Libby’s letter? What would you add to or subtract from FreeThinke’s two responses? Remember please that Libby is a former classmate and very old friend who happens to think differently from me. Our political differences don’t give anyone a license to be rude, unkind or disrespectful.

Monday, September 7, 2015

We Wish You a

Saturday, September 5, 2015

In Honor of Labor Day

COME, LABOR ON

Tune: “Ora Labora” by T. Tertius Noble
Text: Jane Borthwick

Gerre Hancock, organist, St. Thomas, New York

Come, labor on.
Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain,
while all around us waves the golden grain?
And to each servant does the Master say,
"Go work today."

Come, labor on.
The enemy is watching night and day,
to sow the tares, to snatch the seed away;
while we in sleep our duty have forgot,
he slumbered not.

Come, labor on.
Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No arm so weak but may do service here:
by feeblest agents may our God fulfill
his righteous will.

Come, labor on.
Claim the high calling angels cannot share--
to young and old the Gospel gladness bear;
redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly.
The night draws nigh.

Come, labor on.
No time for rest, till glows the western sky,
till the long shadows o'er our pathway lie,
and a glad sound comes with the setting sun.
"Servants, well done."

An alternative arrangement performed

by a parish choir in Columbia, S.C.

ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFqM2bx4Atk

Friday, August 28, 2015

This

CARNIVAL

CONTEMPT

This Celebration

SIN, SICKNESS, DISEASE, CORRUPTION, DEPRAVITY,

ARROGANCE, ILL WILL

and

DEATH

is now

CLOSED

Till Further Notice

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The Very Real Costs of

Birthright Citzenship

by IAN TUTTLE, August 21, 2915

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/422921/birthright-citizenship-economic-costs-incentives

“Peter and Ellie Yang,” the subjects of Benjamin Carlson’s fascinating new Rolling Stone essay, “Welcome to Maternity Hotel California,” paid $35,000 to have their second child in the United States. In 2012 Chinese state media reported 10,000 “tourist births” by Chinese couples in the United States; other estimates skew as high as 60,000.

Following Donald Trump’s call for an end to birthright citizenship, and renewed attention on “anchor babies,” Carlson’s exposé on “birth tourism” seems to confirm that the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment works as a magnet for at least some parents across the globe. But just how big a magnet is it?

According to Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) legal policy analyst Jon Feere, ... between 350,000 and 400,000 children are born annually to an illegal-alien mother residing in the United States — as many as one in ten births nationwide.

As of 2010, four out of five children of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. were born here — some four million kids. ... The Pew Research Center noted that, while illegal immigrants make up about 4 percent of the adult population, “because they have high birthrates, their children make up a much larger share of both the newborn population (8 percent) and the child population (7 percent) ....”

The cost of this is not negligible. Inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that a child born in 2013 would cost his parents $304,480 from birth to his eighteenth birthday. Given that illegal-alien households are normally low-income households (three out of five illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children live at or near the poverty line), one would expect that a significant portion of that cost will fall on the government.

And that’s exactly what‘s happening. According to CIS, 71 percent of illegal-alien headed households with children received some sort of welfare in 2009, compared with 39 percent of native-headed houses with children.

Illegal immigrants generally access welfare programs through their U.S.-born children, to whom government assistance is guaranteed. Additionally, U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are entitled to American public schools, health care, and more, even though illegal-alien households rarely pay taxes.

RELATED: Trump’s Critics Are Wrong about the 14th Amendment and Birthright Citizenship

The short-term cost of “anchor babies” was revealed a decade ago in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. “‘Anchor babies’ born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income,” wrote medical attorney Madeleine Pelner Cosman. She noted the increasingly costly situation in California:

ADVERTISING

In 2003 in Stockton, California, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital’s maternity ward were anchor babies, and 45 percent of Stockton children under age six are Latino (up from 30 percent in 1993).

In 1994, 74,987 anchor babies in California hospital maternity units cost $215 million and constituted 36 percent of all Medi-Cal ... births. Now [2005] they account for substantially more than half.

While perhaps humane, measures such as the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospital emergency departments to treat all patients with an “emergency” (an infinitely malleable term), regardless of documentation or ability to pay, have facilitated the abuse of American health care by illegal aliens, according to Cosman.

RELATED: What Conservatives Get Wrong
about Birthright Citizenship and the Constitution

There are long-term costs, too. U.S.-born children of illegal aliens can sponsor the immigration of family members once they come of age. At 18, an “anchor baby” can sponsor an overseas spouse and unmarried children of his own; at 21, he can sponsor parents and siblings.

There may be a long waiting period before that legal benefit is of use. But it’s a fact that illegal aliens with American-born children are much less likely to be deported, and that policy has been effectively enshrined in law with President Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) policy, which would effectively grant amnesty to some 5 million illegal aliens, on top of the 2 to 3 million granted amnesty under his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.

(DAPA is currently under scrutiny in the courts.)
GET FREE EXCLUSIVE NR CONTENT

It is difficult to contend that the promise of birthright citizenship is not serving as a magnet. Carlson’s Rolling Stone essay is not about “anchor babies,” as the term is commonly applied (to children of illegal aliens), but about “birth tourists” — persons from overseas, typically of some means, who acquire temporary visas in order to give birth in the United States. Yet if middle-class Chinese (and Russian and Turkish and Nigerian) couples are incentivized by the 14th Amendment to travel to the U.S. to give birth, shouldn’t it be an even bigger draw for expecting mothers from Latin America, who typically live in much more difficult circumstances?

Note, as an indicator of the power of immigration incentives, the massive influx of unaccompanied minors that converged on the U.S.–Mexico border last summer when news of DACA spread through Central America.

Ending birth tourism is difficult. The tools available to Customs and Border Patrol — for example, spotting and enforcing visa fraud — are ineffective, and the penalty for at least some visa-related offenses is a prohibition on visits after the current visit.

MORE IMMIGRATION DID FACEBOOK INTENTIONALLY BLOCK POSTS FROM CONSERVATIVE IMMIGRATION THINK TANK?

WORK IN BIGTECH FOR HIRE: AMERICANS NEED NOT APPLY ON IMMIGRATION, SANTORUM ADDS SUBSTANCE

But “anchor babies” are a largely preventable phenomenon, mainly by the simple enforcement of current immigration laws. Stopping illegal immigration at the border, and instituting an actually effective visa-tracking system to crack down on overstays, would do much to discourage efforts to take advantage of American largesse.

With The Donald’s prompting, birthright citizenship has become the focus of the current news cycle — despite ... current political realities, the composition of the Supreme Court, and the history of 14th Amendment jurisprudence, ending the practice is a fanciful aim.

But that is all right. “Anchor babies” are a small, though not negligible, component of our ongoing illegal-immigration crisis. Prioritizing border and visa enforcement to help end our much larger problems would do much to resolve this one, too.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Some Pictures are Worth MORE than a Thousand Words

Psssssssst! This is HUMOR, folks.

Please spare us the BROADSIDES,

the BROMIDES and the BOILERPLATE.

The ANTI-HILLARY

The Definition of a Lady

She doesn't shout. She doesn't pout.
She dares to dream, but doesn't scheme.
She doesn't lie. She doesn't cry.
She doesn't whine. She doesn't pine.
She doesn't simper. She doesn't whimper.
She doesn't accuse. She doesn't excuse.
She doesn't seem to have an axe to grind.
In short she's really a great find.
How could we all not love her

Knowing no one sits above her,

And all her fast-diminishing kind?

~ FreeThinke

Friday, August 21, 2015

I SUPPORT

MARK STEYN

The Trumping of Party

by Mark Steyn

Steyn on America

August 17, 2015

Donald Trump has now said that he would reverse President Obama's executive amnesty for "DREAMers" - illegal immigrants who've been here since they were children - and deport every last member of the Undocumented-American community. The amnesty for the kids was supposed to prefigure an amnesty for their parents - for what mean old politician would advocate breaking up families? But, as he told NBC's Chuck Todd, Trump plans to keep the families together by deporting every single one of them:

"We're going to keep the families together, but they have to go," he said in the interview, which will air in full on NBC's "Meet the Press" this Sunday.

Pressed on what he'd do if the immigrants in question had nowhere to return to, Trump reiterated: "They have to go."

"We will work with them. They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we don't have a country."

Now there's a campaign slogan.

But he's gone beyond that. Trump has - ta-da! - a policy paper:

1. A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border.

2. A nation without laws is not a nation. Laws passed in accordance with our Constitutional system of government must be enforced.

3. A nation that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation. Any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and security for all Americans.

In other words, as every functioning society understood until two generations ago, immigration has to benefit the people who are already here. Government owes a duty to its own citizens before those of the rest of the planet - no matter how cuddly and loveable they might be. The fact that it is necessary to state the obvious and that no "viable" "mainstream" candidate from either party is willing to state it is testament to how deformed contemporary western politics is. Trump may not be a "real" Republican or a "real" conservative, but most of his rivals are not "real" - period, as Carly Fiorina would say.

There seems to be some dispute among the consultant-industrial complex as to whether Trump's rise comes from his seizing the immigration issue or because folks are just enjoying the show - like "Breaking Bad" star Bryan Cranston:

"I actually like his candor," Cranston said. "There's something so refreshing about shaking up that world that is all about being handled and here comes this loose cannon who has terrible ideas and would be a horrible president, but there's something great about his 'I-don't-give-a-shit' attitude that really kind of keeps others honest."

On the other hand, when it's a subject that both parties are evasive and dishonest about, maybe the issue and the I-don't-give-a-sh*t candor are perfectly aligned.

The retort that Trump is not a "real" Republican or a "real" conservative would of course be a devastating criticism had "real" Republicans and "real" conservatives" in Washington managed actually to "conserve" anything during their time in office. Fiscal prudence? Constrained welfare? Private health care? Religious liberty? There's no point to a purity test for a party that folds more reliably than the White House valet. As I've said, for the Republican establishment the issue is Trump; for a large part of the base the issue is the Republican establishment.

And among the broader citizenry, where elections are decided, the GOP's complaint is entirely irrelevant. It's not often that I find the pajama boys of Vox.com worth reading, but this Ezra Klein column makes an interesting point:

It's not that Trump is a moderate Republican. It's that he's a moderate, full stop. And he's the kind of moderate that really exists, not the kind of moderate Washington likes to pretend exists.

What, after all, is a "moderate"?

The way it works, explains David Broockman, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, is that a pollster will ask people for their position on a wide range of issues: marijuana legalization, the war in Iraq, universal health care, gay marriage, taxes, climate change, and so on. The answers will then be coded as to whether they're left or right. People who have a mix of answers on the left and the right average out to the middle — and so they're labeled as moderate.

But when you drill down into those individual answers you find a lot of opinions that are far from the political center. "A lot of people say we should have a universal health-care system run by the state like the British," Broockman told me in July 2014. "A lot of people say we should deport all undocumented immigrants immediately with no due process."

Because the first position is "left" and the second position is "right", the pollsters split the difference and label such a person a "moderate". But he isn't actually a moderate, so much as bipartisanly extreme. In practice, most "moderates" boil down to that: They hold some leftie and some rightie positions. The most familiar type of "moderate" in American politics are the so-called "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" red governors of blue states - Christie Whitman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Pataki and (in his Massachusetts incarnation) Mitt Romney. In practice, they usually turn out to be not all that "fiscally conservative" because it turns out the social liberalism comes with quite a price tag.

Suppose there were a countervailing force to the fiscally conservative, socially liberal type? Fiscally liberal, socially (or at any rate culturally) conservative. Recent elections in Europe suggest there's no shortage of voters who like their welfare checks, free health care, state pension plans ...but don't see what any of that has to do with letting the country fill up with fanatical Muslims hot for sharia and female genital mutilation. Once upon a time the old left-wing parties represented that interest, but the British Labour Party and most European social democratic parties abandoned that market when they got hot for multiculturalism and diversity.

Is there a similar constituency in America? In other words, people who like their Medicare and food stamps ...but, like Trump, think there are too many unskilled Mexican peasants flooding into a country with ever diminishing social mobility and no hope of economic improvement without a credential that requires taking on a quarter-million dollars in debt. As Trump's detractors see it, he's just a reality-show buffoon with a portfolio of incoherent attitudes that display no coherent worldview. But very few people go around with a philosophically consistent attitude to life: Your approach to, say, health insurance is determined less by abstract principles than by whether you can afford it. Likewise, your attitude to the DREAMers may owe more to whether your local school district is collapsing under the weight of all this heartwarming diversity.

Presumably, if you're one of these bipartisanly extreme moderates, which of your incoherent positions is more pressing on election day determines your vote. The question then is whether large numbers of the electorate are as concerned about immigration as Trump purports to be. Via Mickey Kaus, for example, I found this nugget in a new paper by that David Broockman fellow quoted up above:

On immigration and abortion citizens tend to think the entire range of elite policy debate is too far to the left.

But on abortion one of the two parties at least talks the talk, even if it does nothing. On immigration both parties are engaged in a conspiracy against the American people. One party gets cheap voters and Big Government dependents; the other gets cheap labor and a chocolate on its turned down coverlet in the junior suite. The Democrats made a smarter deal. The Republicans signed a demographic death warrant. Yet Jeb! and the other alleged non-buffoons in the race have to be dragged kicking and screaming to get beyond the most ludicrous sentimentalist pap on the subject. If a "real" Republican is someone who toes the party line on a suicide mission, why be surprised that voters seek reality elsewhere?

The experts are still assuring us that the next Trumpian infelicity - after Mexicans, McCain and Megyn - will be the one that causes his campaign to self-destruct. You could be waiting a long time. As Ann Coulter says, the quickest way to get rid of Trump is to steal his issue and run with it.

I SUPPORT

MARK STEYN

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

_______ "Me And My Server" _______

– Sung to the tune of Me and My Shadow –

Shades of night are falling and I'm lonely
Scheming on the hustings, feeling blue.
Voters wanting fun
Leave me one by one;
Guess I'll wind up like I always do
With only

Me and My Server
Opening state secrets to
Enemy agents
Giving bucks to me not you
They see me as a rock
For them I’m there
They needn’t knock,

For their dreams I share.
So, Me and My Server
Open doors so they’ll come through
And when we’re deep in hock
They’ll climb your stairs
And knock

Then liquidate your stock
So, Me and My Server
Will really put the screws to you!

~ Anne Animus

Now LISTEN to the MUSIC that goes with the VERSE Above

Monday, August 17, 2015

A Complete Change of Pace
THE TELEPHONE
A Satirical Opera in One Short Act
by
Gian Carlo Menotti
Written in 1939, long before the Cellphone-Texting Era Menotti nevertheless anticipated what was to come in a most amusing fashion in this charming extended joke of an opera, little more than twenty minutes in length.