Monday, August 29, 2016



FORMULA for FINDING FUN

It's easier to bitch than stitch,
It's easier to whine than mine.
It's easier to make noise than to exhibit poise.
It's easier to say "I'm fucked," than to construct.

To sit in the gutter counting your woes
In shit-caked jeans with a runny nose
Ranting in puddles of frozen piss
Demonstrates only that something's amiss.

So, in the bleak winter
Go shovel some snow ––

...... Cheer up the aged
...... And those who are caged.
...... Some joy you might find
...... If you read to the blind.
...... Don't play the whore,
...... Instead scrub the floor

Now get up and go!

In summer, each lazy laddie
And each slothful lass
Should get off their ass
And go mow the grass.

Don't pout and make wishes
Just go wash the dishes.
If you need to find labor,
Go help your neighbor.

Demanding is easy
Producing is hard
Protests are sleazy
Thus saith The Bard.



EPILOGUE

There's always something you can do.
Don't succumb to feeling blue.
Salvation's found in helping others
Not thinking you deserve your druthers.
Never worry. Never fear.
Just do your best to spread good cheer.
Needed work is never done;
Effort's where we find our fun.
And if you're old, and stuck at home,
You can always write a poem.
But if you find your mind in fog,
For Heaven’s sake DON’T start a BLOG!

~ FreeThinke


TOO GOOD 4U to MISS

Please note the date. Why do we never learn?

HUMA-LIATION, 2016. Why do they never learn?

Clinton aide Abedin announces
separation from Weiner


Politico, by Nick Gass    Original Article

Top Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin on Monday announced that 
she has decided to separate from her husband, Anthony Weiner, the 
former congressman who has been repeatedly caught sexting with 
other women. "After long and painful consideration and work on 
my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband," 
Abed in said ... "Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best 
for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, 
I ask for respect for our privacy." The announcement comes after 
the New York Post reported on Weiner´s latest ... [AHEM!]





Friday, August 26, 2016

What me worry? Not a chance!

TODAY’S 
ACCEPTABLE 
STANDARD OF
C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N

HRC Reinvents Herself as Alfred E. Newman

The Bribery Standard


         






by Charles Krauthammer 


August 25 at 7:21 PM


Bernie Sanders never understood the epic quality of the Clinton scandals. In his first debate, he famously dismissed the email issue, it being beneath the dignity of a great revolutionary to deal in things so tawdry and straightforward.


Sanders failed to understand that Clinton scandals are sprawling, multi-layered, complex things. They defy time and space. They grow and burrow.
The central problem with Hillary Clinton’s emails was not the classified material. It wasn’t the headline-making charge by the FBI director of her extreme carelessness in handling it.


That’s a serious offense, to be sure, and could very well have been grounds for indictment. And it did damage her politically, exposing her sense of above-the-law entitlement and — in her dodges and prevarications, her parsing and evasions — demonstrating her arm’s-length relationship with the truth.


But it was always something of a sideshow. The real question wasn’t classification but: Why did she have a private server in the first place? She obviously lied about the purpose. It wasn’t convenience. It was concealment. What exactly was she hiding?



The State Department says it is reviewing nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed emails recovered as part of the FBI's now-closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails while Secretary of State.(AP)


Was this merely the prudent paranoia of someone who habitually walks the line of legality? After all, if she controls the server, she controls the evidence, and can destroy it — as she did 30,000 emails — at will.


But destroy what? Remember: She set up the system before even taking office. It’s clear what she wanted to protect from scrutiny: Clinton Foundation business.


The foundation is a massive family enterprise disguised as a charity, an opaque and elaborate mechanism for sucking money from the rich and the tyrannous to be channeled to Clinton Inc. Its purpose is to maintain the Clintons’ lifestyle (offices, travel, accommodations, etc.), secure profitable connections, produce favorable publicity and reliably employ a vast entourage of retainers, ready to serve today and at the coming Clinton Restoration.


Now we learn how the whole machine operated. Two weeks ago, emails began dribbling out showing foundation officials contacting State Department counterparts to ask favors for foundation “friends.” Say, a meeting with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon for one particularly generous Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire.


Big deal, said the Clinton defenders. Low-level stuff. No involvement of the secretary herself. Until — drip, drip — the next batch revealed foundation requests for face time with the secretary herself. Such as one from the crown prince of Bahrain.


To be sure, Bahrain, home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, is an important Persian Gulf ally. Its crown prince shouldn’t have to go through a foundation — to which his government donated at least $50,000 — to get to the secretary. The fact that he did is telling.


Now, a further drip: The Associated Press found that more than half the private interests who were granted phone or personal contact with Secretary Clinton — 85 of 154 — were donors to the foundation. Total contributions? As much as $156 million.


Current Clinton response? There was no quid pro quo.


What a long way we’ve come. This is the very last line of defense. Yes, it’s obvious that access and influence were sold. But no one has demonstrated definitively that the donors received something tangible of value — a pipeline, a permit, a waiver, a favorable regulatory ruling — in exchange.


It’s hard to believe the Clinton folks would be stupid enough to commit something so blatant to writing. Nonetheless, there might be an email allusion to some such conversation. With thousands more emails to come, who knows what lies beneath.


On the face of it, it’s rather odd that a visible quid pro quo is the bright line for malfeasance. Anything short of that — the country is awash with political money that buys access — is deemed acceptable. As Donald Trump says of his own donation-giving days, “when I need something from them . . . I call them, they are there for me.” This is considered routine and unremarkable.


It’s not until a Rolex shows up on your wrist that you get indicted. Or you are found to have dangled a Senate appointment for cash. Then, like Rod Blagojevich, you go to jail. (He got 14 years.)


Yet we are hardly bothered by the routine practice of presidents rewarding big donors with cushy ambassadorships, appointments to portentous boards and invitations to state dinners.


The bright line seems to be outright bribery. Anything short of that is considered acceptable corruption — not just for the Clintons, but for everyone.  It’s a sorry standard. And right now it is Hillary Clinton’s saving grace.

You want her? Brother, you can have her.


God bless Judicial Watch


Part of Obama's ongoing love affair with Iran.

 

Clinton team shows up in force. Trembling hands visible.

 

Stop the bleeding or else.


The truly frightening part comes 
when we find out who owns us.



Chances are it was. Wait for the smoking gun.


Must Reads at lucianne.com News Forum Homepage 

Saturday, August 20, 2016

A Ferociously Fatuous


FEMME FATALE 


Her comments seemed often quite ane,
Though her morals were certainly maculate.
She was sipid and sidious, insane
And mune to the gossip quite draculate


Which trilled that her conduct was peccable.
She thought her behavior quite ferior
But
flagrante delicto is wreckable
E'en to those who believe they're superior.


For a time this domitable daughter
Insisted on staying cognito
Her hibitions flowed freely as water
From D.C. to Sausolito.


The results of this all were too effable
Her friends forgot she was ane
They thought she was merely laughable
Which caused her considerable pain.


"Enough of this!" she said one night
"The future still is evitable
I haven't yet begun to fight
To prove I'm not a vegetable.”


So petuously did this dam-ned dame
Set out in search of iquity
To make her imical once again
For righteous ubiquity



Her virtue no longer is vincible
She holds her hibitions in check
Her whole life is matter of principle, 
But she looks and feels like a wreck!

Now that she's become dolent, they're dignant.
She's just a
dividual now,
But mune to the scarlet pigment
That still stains her inferior brow.



~ Anne Animus

Friday, August 19, 2016

What Do You Think 
of the 
RYAN LOCHTE 
AFFAIR?




Do you ACCEPT the media’s assertion
that he is, indeed, guilty of a crime?

If so, what should be his punishment?

Go ahead speculate to your heart's content. 
This is not a courtroom, and no one 
is on trial here today.

But please observe our rule that 
COMMENTS MUST be RELEVANT 
to the topic of the post.

Thursday, August 18, 2016


Please Draw Your Own Conclusions 
As To What This May Or May Not Imply

Four Mysterious Deaths 
Connected to the DNC in 
Less Than a Month









DOES THIS PASS 
the SMELL TEST?



Please give us your reasons 
for telling us why 
or why not?



Monday, August 15, 2016

Great Aunt Mary 
and the 
American Dream



By the time I came along Great Aunt Mary was already well into her fifties, but still a “dynamo,” as most family members described her, their affection tinged with awe, and probably a bit of envy too. The latter, however, was never admitted openly.

She came to the United States as an infant. My grandfather, who was just nine at the time Great Grandma made the voyage from Naples to “The Land of Opportunity,” took charge of his baby sister during the difficult crossing, and proudly carried her in his young arms as they departed the ship that took them to Ellis Island and the Hope of attaining a better future. 

Aunt Mary was a little person. She’d been afflicted with rickets as a toddler, which stunted her growth and bent her legs, but it never occurred either to her or my Great-Grandmother to let a little thing like that stand in their way.  So little Mary grew quickly into a responsible, amazingly resourceful adult, despite not having the benefit of much education.  Most didn’t have much schooling in those days –– especially girls, who were expected to begin learning to cook, sew, mend, clean, keep house, and nurse the sick from toddlerhood, then marry young, bear children, and raise them as well as possible to carry on the family traditions. 

Like my grandmother, who was imported by Mail-Order from the Old Country to marry my grandfather on Great Grandma’s direct orders soon after Grandpa’s eighteenth birthday, Great Aunt Mary was different. Neither woman had much education, but they were intelligent, ambitious, courageous, –– and most important of all ––, they had Vision and tremendous respect for Learning.

By the time little Aunt Mary married Uncle Frank, and had brought Alice and John into the world she realized that if her children were ever to get ahead, they would have to graduate from college –– an almost unheard of ambition for members of  the “lower orders” of that time –– especially recent immigrants whose mastery of English was considered sketchy at best.

Uncle Frank, a dapper, handsome little man whom Great Aunt Mary adored till the end of their days, wasn’t the type “to set the world on fire” to use her own words to describe him.  He was employed as a meter reader for the local Water Company, and there he stayed contentedly for nearly fifty years until his retirement. They got by, but Mary knew there would never be enough money to send Alice and John to college, unless she did something on her own to make it happen.

Being a naturally creative, resourceful, highly ambitious person blest with a super-abundance of energy, Aunt Mary come up with a plan to make money in a way that would be both a credit to herself and a benefit to the entire community.

Like many a smart entrepreneur before her, Aunt Mary perceived a need, and had great faith that she had the means to fulfill it with her own two hands.
  


In those days it was possible to rent a large Victorian-style house with a good-sized garden and wraparound porch in a decent neighborhood for less than ten dollars a month. Always by nature a wonderful housekeeper famed in the family for maintaining a home so clean, “you could eat right off the floor,” Aunt Mary also had a knack for making her surroundings pleasant, comfortable and attractive.  She supplemented the family income by renting a spare bedroom on the ground floor, and serving her paying guest breakfast every morning along with the rest of the family.

What today would be described as “poverty,” never seemed to faze Aunt Mary a bit. Always an active churchwoman, she befriended more prosperous parishioners who served with her on the Altar Guild of the Episcopal Church. These women liked and respected Aunt Mary, and often supplied her with beautiful fabrics left over from decorating projects in their big houses on The Hill or from their dressmakers –– “scraps” from which she busily created magic on her treadle sewing machine –– items that brightened her home and helped supply the annual Church Bazaar with handmade tea cozies, pot-holders, small, decorative pillows and the like.



Oh, and did I tell you, she also made all the clothes  for herself and her daughter, and even learned enough about the art of tailoring to supplement Uncle Frank’s wardrobe?

As my mother, –– the last of eight children, who was born in 1913 –– shortly after the Titanic, –– during the the Great Influenza Pandemic that killed somewhere between twenty and fifty-million worldwide, and nearly three-quarters-of a million Americans –– and just before the outbreak of the First World War ––, often said, “Nothing can stop Aunt Mary once she’s set her mind on something.  She has such talent she could serve you a tuna fish sandwich on a paper doily, and glass of iced tea, and make you believe you were lunching at Peacock Alley or the Palm Court at the Plaza.”

Mother’s opinion partly said in jest was substantially accurate. In addition to the many virtues listed above, Aunt Mary was also an excellent cook and a born hostess. She liked nothing better than to entertain family and friends in her spacious, handsomely-appointed Victorian home.  And so it came to pass that she had what-turned out to be a profitable brainstorm, and decided to put her abundant talents as a homemaker to use as a means of making money.


She saved her pennies, went out and bought several sets of card tables and folding chairs, which she was able to store in a large hall closet under the stairs, and let it be known that she would soon be opening her home each day to serve lunch at a modest price to the schoolteachers of the community.

To make a long story short Aunt Mary’s homemade enterprise caught on like wildfire. She was already respected, well-liked, and regarded as a reliable source of aid and comfort by many of the well-to-do. Her home was charming, her food as satisfying as it was appetizing, and true to her word the price she charged for lunch each day –– a repast that would likely include a cup of homemade soup, a sandwich, a cup of tea or coffee, and either a frosted cupcake, several of her homemade cookies, or a piece of her famous applesauce cake, which I remember as the richest, best-tasting spice cake I’ve tasted to this very day –– her prices remained affordable yet still enabled her to turn a tidy profit.


Although lunch was supposed to be for the schoolteachers only, the Mayor soon caught on to a good thing and wanted to be included too, as did several members of the City Council, the Clergy and other influential citizens.  So, never one to do things by halves, Aunt Mary set aside time for a second shift to accommodate the overflow. By rights she should have hired assistants, but since her objective ws to earn as much money as she possibly could, she managed to do the whole thing entirely by herself for the better part of twelve years.

Great Aunt Mary was able by dint of her talent, ingenuity, hard work, and a naturally sanguine disposition to make enough to put both of her children through college. Fortunately both Alice and John did their part, were exemplary students throughout their school careers, were each successful in their chosen fields and turned out to be a great credit to their mother. 

Now all this happened more than a century ago –– before we were menaced by the Federal Income Tax, the Federal Reserve, State Sales Taxes, and ever-increasing legislation stifling Initiative, restraining  Trade, and the many other depredations ushered in during the Progressive Era, which transformed America from the Land of Opportunity to a Land of Ever-Increasing Taxation and Soul-Deadening Regimentation.

Before Progressivism took over, inspiring success stories like my Great Aunt Mary’s numbered in the hundreds of thousands.  How many similar tales do you hear about today in a land that now sends Government Officials to shut down Children’s Lemonade Stands, and lay heavy fines against anyone with the unmitigated gall to try to sell homemade food to her neighbors without paying OBEISANCE to Government Agencies that demand long waiting periods for the “privilege” of being ALLOWED just do business. Which permission, IF granted, always demands heavy payment for an annual LICENSE, and an agreement to SUBJECT themselves to noisome Government Inspections at frequent intervals.

Alas and Alack! Great Aunt Mary’s achievement would not be possible today.  The bookkeeping imposed on her alone would doubtless use up so much of her time and energy there wouldn’t be anything left to enable her to perform the wonders she did back when these United States were still “The Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave.”




OFF-TOPIC, but an IMPORTANT MILESTONE 
that DESERVES RECOGNITION

JOHN McLAUGHLIN, HOST of THE McLAUGHLIN GROUP, PASSED AWAY on TUESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2016. 
HE WAS 89.



This was very sad news, but I was not surprised. The McLaughlin Group has been a ritual that defined Sunday morning for me for the past twenty-two years –– ever since I stopped attending church. Can't imagine what life will be like without John McLaughlin, but he'd been looking peeked most of the past year, seemed low on energy, lacked his usual brisk, acerbic tone, and slouched in his host's chair as though exhausted during many of the recent episodes.

Last Sunday –– just three days ago ––, I tuned in with my usual cut of coffee to watch the fur fly, and was genuinely shocked to see the announcement preceding the program telling us in Mclaughlin's own words that he would be absent for the first time in 34 years –– ever since the program began.

Even so, he still managed to announce each change of topic in a series of recorded messages, but his voice sounded weak, his speech slurred, and I sort of knew he wouldn't be with us much longer, though naturally I hoped he'd be able to return for another round or two, and at least see us through the election. 

Alas! It was not meant to be.

Luis Rukeyser's untimely death several years ago, left a big hole in PBS's programming. Losing McLaughlin may very well sound the death knell for the organization as we've known and loved it. The quality of programing has been going steadily downhill for several decades Downton Abbey notwithstanding.

To lose Antonin Scalia, Downton Abbey and John McLaughlin all in one year –– especially THIS dreadful election year –– is depressing and discouraging. 

The cause of his death was not disclosed, but I think it may be safe to assume he suffered a stroke, but what difference does it take what finished him? He was a doughty old guy –– a lovable curmudgeon, –– an American Original, who had become an institution.

He will be sorely missed, and we are unlikely to see his equal again in our lifetime.

Bye Bye, John. We loved you.

~ FreeThinke