RedStateEclectic

How Stupid Does He Think We Are?

The Obama's White House guest list has been partially released.

The most newsworthy names on the list appeared to be Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, two controversial figures from Mr Obama's recent Chicago past. But the White House insisted that these were not the same individuals and merely shared names with the president's fiery former pastor and the former domestic terrorist, who is now a left-wing professor.

Wow! What coincidences!

Yes, Sue Lowden Stole The Election From Ron Paul

http://www.rgj.com/article/20091030/NEWS/91030046/1321/NEWS

The new head of the Nevada GOP finally unlocked the ballot box that Lowden stole. Although the wicked wench of the west shut down her convention after only 3 delegate choice votes had been cast rather than see her candidate of choice lose, the ballots that were cast indeed handed Paul a win.

The Nevada people claimed that Paul should have won, and this seems to back their accusations up.

According to Friday’s count, Paul delegate Robert Terhune won the most votes, with 288. Paul supporters Marla Criss and Pat Kerby had 283 votes each.

The delegates who actually went to the national convention for the 2nd Congressional District were Michelle Beard, who received 12 votes; Fely Quitevis, who received 19 votes; and Barbara Scoville who received no votes.

Sue Lowden is running for the GOP nomination in the race against Harry Reid.  She doesn't deserve to win.  It's clear that her priorities lie somewhere other than with the voters.

Apparently I am not the only person who feels this way. A group in Nevada has formed a PAC to oppose her bid.  I wish them luck.

Chosen by State GOP Leaders

New York’s race in the 23rd takes an interesting turn.  If I were a “State GOP Leader”, it might be time to rethink the strength of my position.  Things are brewing out here in the real world, folks.

LLE

Halloween for the Ignorant

In my youth, Halloween did not happen in Germany. Now, it is all around, like American baseball caps.

For the benefit of my own ignorant self, here is some, I hope, accurate background stuff on Halloween.

The image is from North Atlantic Skyline, a photographic diary by John Smyth, an excellent photographer and appropriately observant inhabitant of the West of Ireland.

Of Catholic origin, the word is a corruption of All Hallow's Eve.

November 1 is "All Hollows Day" or "All Saints Day," a Catholic day of observance in honour of saints.

In the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31.

It is remarkable to think they had "nationwide" official regulations, including a holiday.

At any rate, the holiday was called Samhain (pronounced sow-in), which means end of summer, the Celtic New Year.

More.

As European immigrants came to America, they brought their varied Halloween customs with them. Because of the rigid Protestant belief systems that characterized early New England, celebration of Halloween in colonial times was extremely limited there.

It was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups, as well as the American Indians, meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included "play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other's fortunes, dance, and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. Young women believed that, on Halloween, they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings, or mirrors.

More.

And still more on The History of Halloween.

H.R. 1207 Has Been Gutted

From Bloomberg News:

Representative Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who has called for an end to the Federal Reserve, said legislation he introduced to audit monetary policy has been “gutted” while moving toward a possible vote in the Democratic-controlled House.

The bill, with 308 co-sponsors, has been stripped of provisions that would remove Fed exemptions from audits of transactions with foreign central banks, monetary policy deliberations, transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee and communications between the Board, the reserve banks and staff, Paul said today.

“There’s nothing left, it’s been gutted,” he said in a telephone interview. “This is not a partisan issue. People all over the country want to know what the Fed is up to, and this legislation was supposed to help them do that.”

Who's responsible? Why, none other than Congressman Mel Watt, the shifty rep who gave Thomas Woods a hard time during his testimony while the bill was in committee. Watt, btw, just happens to be from the congressional district which includes Charlotte - the headquarters for Bank of America.

Best Novels (and Other Literary Pieces) - Part I

 Mikhail Bulgakov A Country Doctor's Notebook

With the ink still wet on his diploma, the twenty-five-year-old Dr Mikhail Bulgakov was flung into the depths of rural Russia which, in 1916-17, was still largely unaffected by such novelties as the motor car, the telephone or electric light. How his alter-ego copes (or fails to cope) with the new and often appalling responsibilities of a lone doctor in a vast country practice - on the eve of Revolution - is described in Bulgakov's delightful blend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance.

A marvelous writer. The oil lamps of his little provincial hospital seemed to him a lonely beacon which symbolised the battle between light and darkness... These straightforward yet extraordinary sketches gain their strength from also being the account of a young man's growth. One begins to see that he became a novelist not because he had material but because he was storing up passion and temperament Wryly funny and fascinating, blizzards blow, wolves run loose in the forests, the doctor duels with Death, who is never satisfied...

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Dino Buzzati The Tartar Steppe

 

The Tartar Steppe (Italian: Il deserto dei Tartari, literally The Desert of the Tartars) is a novel by Italian author Dino Buzzati, published in 1940.

The novel tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo, and his life spent guarding the Bastiani Fortress, an old, unmaintained border fortress. The central plot of the novel focuses on Drogo's lifelong wait for a great war in which his life and the existence of the fort can prove its usefulness. The human need for giving life meaning and the soldier's desire for glory are the overriding themes of the novel. Drogo, who is posted to the remote outpost overlooking a desolate Tartar desert, spends his entire career waiting for the barbarian horde rumored to live beyond the desert. Without noticing, Drogo finds that in his watch over the fort he has let years and decades pass, and that while his old friends in the city have had children, married and lived full lives, he has come away with nothing except a shared solidarity with his fellow soldiers in their long, patient vigil.

In 1976 the novel was adapted into an eponymous film (known in English as The Desert of the Tartars) by Italian director Valerio Zurlini and starring Jacques Perrin as Drogo with Max von Sydow as Horitz and Vittorio Gassman as Filimore. The film omits certain parts of the novel, especially those relating to the lives of Drogo's friends in his home town.

The novel was a major influence on South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee's 1980 masterpiece, Waiting for the Barbarians, the title of which is borrowed from Constantine P. Cavafy's poem of the same name. More.

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor

 

In 1955, eight crewmen were cast overboard from the Colombian destroyer Caldas, en route to its home port of Cartagena from Mobile, Ala. The sole survivor, Luis Alejandro Velasco, told his adventures to Garcia Marquez, then working as a reporter for the Bogota daily El Spectator, where Velasco's story of a seeming eternity of thirst, hunger and hallucinations first appeared. The Nobel Laureate's lean prose perfectly captures the straightforwardness of the sailor's voice as he recounts his 10-day drift at sea in a cork raft: the fading senses of direction, motion, time; his struggle against sharks, which appeared punctually each evening at 5:00; starvation that drove him to try-in vain to eat the soles of his shoes. "My heroism consisted of not letting myself die," states Velasco. This slim volume is a superb example of journalism by a professional of the art.

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James Joyce Stephen Hero

Uniquely atmospheric. 

Stephen Hero "sets an objective reality in the plain light of day in simple, effective prose."

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Herman Melville Bartleby

The narrator, an elderly lawyer who has a very comfortable business helping wealthy men deal with mortgages, title deeds, and bonds, relates the story of the strangest man he has ever known.

One day, when asked by the narrator to help proofread a copied document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his stock response: "I would prefer not to." To the dismay of the narrator and to the irritation of the other employees, Bartleby performs fewer and fewer tasks around the office. The narrator makes several attempts to reason with him and to learn something about him, but Bartleby offers nothing but his signature "I would prefer not to." One weekend the narrator stops by the office unexpectedly and discovers that Bartleby has started living there. More.

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Antonio Skármeta Ardiente Paciencia (The Postman)

This is the story of one Mario, who becomes a postman once Isla Negra, an island off the coast of Chile, gets a literate resident, Pablo Neruda. Mario is an admirer of Neruda's works, and is determined to form a personal bond with the poet, with a view to getting a coveted autograph. When Mario falls in love with the local beauty Beatriz, however, his bond with Neruda becomes much more than that of an autograph-seeker: the poet recognises a fellow dreamer in Mario, and helps him in his quest of love.

The story is presented in a ceremonial language sometimes verging on the pompous, as in "He was bathed in the light of the incommensurable moon and felt certain, as he stroked her neck, that he knew about infinity." Skármeta's choice of words only adds to the charm of the novella, though. As the author shows in his prologue to "The Postman", he does not take his own verbosity seriously, using it, rather, to add an ironic touch to an otherwise idyllic tale.

Andorra

There are six sovereign micro states in Europe (where almost everything is a little to a lot smaller than in America): Andorra, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican.

Andorra is not that far away from the French towns of Lourdes, Collioure - My Kind of Place, or wonderful Pau, another place especially appealing to me (see the two pictures of Pau below):

 

 

Below is a clip of a short automnal visit to Andorra, a place I somehow never got to, not even vicariously, in school when I should have been reading a play entitled 'Andorra' (required read in my days) by the Swiss author Max Frisch.

Health Care Hijacking

I haven't seen much from the right on the new health care bill that Pelosi introduced, but some of the left seems a little disappointed. Jane Hamsher, at FireDogLake is a breast cancer survivor and a vocal proponent of an all government health care plan.  In a nutshell, she's upset because the bill gives big Pharma the right to monopolize the production of new drugs.  

Doesn't Ms. Hamsher's diappointment give us the right to say, "I told you so?" Don't get me wrong - the comments in her article are heartbreaking. But the people who are being told the drugs they need to live will cost them upwards of $150,000 per year are under the inexplicable delusion that Uncle Sam would happily pay for these in a single-payer system. 

What kills me, or rather what would kill me...what they're missing is that Uncle Sam won't pay for them in a single-payer system either.  If your disease costs too much, or your prognosis isn't good enough, you'll get nothing, because it's for the good of the state to cut their losses.  If a drug is too expensive for Uncle Sam's taste, then nobody will get it.  If you think lobbying for a plan that encompasses the entire population is difficult, wait until you need to lobby on behalf of a disease that only affects a few.  Watch how fast Washington doesn't care about you, the individual.  If you're  a burden on the national purse, you're a burden on the rest of society.  It isn't pretty, but it's true.  They'll starve you until you're nearly dead, then they'll start discussing which crumbs they might throw you if and only if you're big enough to make some serious noise.  And you'll have no options, because you won't have the choices that a market would provide.

And I know what I'm talking about. I wasn't "lucky" enough to get a disease that millions of people get, My disease doesn't garner pretty pink ribbons and celebrities making gut-wrenching Public Service Announcement appeals. But trust me - the meds used to treat it are very expensive.

Here's the thing though - they used to cost a whole lot more. But we-with-my-disease didn't pay that, because when these drugs were first introduced to the market, they weren't even used to treat my disease. Yep, we got them second-hand, because the researchers continued to use the profits they made to find new uses for their wonder-drugs.  And as they succeeded, the market expanded and the prices came down. Me, other sick people, big pharma...we were all the beneficiaries in a somewhat open market.  Imagine that.

Also imagine this: The government in a single-payer system would have told the manufacturer that this drug simply wouldn't be approved because of the cost.  Unproven, a limited market - the incentive to keep costs down would certainly outweigh any medical advances. (Heck, Daschle even touted the financial advantages of refusing technological advances in his book.) The drug company would soon stop making new niche drugs, and people like me would be relegated to having our bodies consume themselves until we ceased being a burden on the system by means of the ultimate cure-all.

That might be good for the majority, but not for me, the individual. So forgive me for holding out a little hope for freedom as the bill meets resistance from both sides of the aisle.

And if it passes? If Big Pharma gets an even bigger subsidy on the backs of the working class?  Well, you Obama voters voted for this. I mean, it was certainly no secret that Obama was bought and paid for by special interests, and he certainly didn't run on an anti-war platform.  A quick look at his finance disclosures revealed that from the beginning of the campaign. We all knew that. But you ignored it. You sold our troops out and tried to cash in on, as CommonDreams puts it, the Obama brand.

Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.

Face it. Everybody knows this bill isn't in the public's interest. Even the most passionate supporters on left-leaning blogs can't muster up more than a half-hearted "we can tweak it later" endorsement.   How pathetic. Really, are we going to stand by, watching the endless Republican vs Democrat C-Span Kabuki theatre?  Are you Obama voters going to sell yourselves out again?

Or are we going to grow together enough for a little while, long enough to let them know that no matter how much we disagree about the solutions, we all absolutely can agree that this is a bill that none of us want?

ATR Singles Out Graham

 Americans for Tax Reform sent a letter to Senator Graham (R-S.C.) urging him to reconsider his support for the prosperity-killing Boxer-Kerry National Energy Tax.
A recent op-ed in the New York Times, co-authored by Senators Graham and Kerry, support a range of policies which are sure to destroy jobs and the economy. Among the proposals outlined in the piece  are protectionism, “we should consider a border tax on items produced in countries that avoid these standards,” and price controls, “The central element is the establishment of a floor and a ceiling for the cost of emission allowances,” while ignoring the massive costs and jobs losses that are inevitable.

According to President Obama’s’ own budget, cap-and-trade is projected to raise $700 billion in taxes over the next decade. “I am urging Senator Graham to remember that the little ‘R’ after his name on his Senate door means you don’t support tax increases,” said ATR President Grover Norquist. “Elected conservatives who support tax increases are like a rat head in a Coke bottle; find one and it ruins the brand forever.”

Senator Lindsey Graham has a long and sordid past as the "republican" senator from South Carolina. My personal feelings aside, how does he manage to win re-election every six years while acting like a democrat in this, the most reddest of states? Nothing in politics is simple or clear. The process is convoluted because of the politician's job, which is to be everything to everybody. Graham has been primaried, but no one has come close to beating him - making it easy for the senator to sail into the senate seat during the general election because, at that point, the "R" button is the only one on the screen.

So, the primary election is the key. How he wins there is anybody's guess. It could be that liberals and moderates vote exclusively in the republican primary for the most liberal choice (which will always be Graham) because of the general election being written in stone. It could be that he keeps his good-ol'-boy network happy in his state and they vote in the primaries in large numbers. Also, he is a warmonger of the highest order which goes a long way in appeasing the bible thumpers (literal translation). He obviously feels that he has the ability to do everything he does with impunity or he wouldn't do it. How do you shake his tree when the evidence shows that he is in the driver's seat? The truth may indeed be that the republican party is moving further to the left. Not much of a move is necessary if you ask me.

If all of the above is true, then how do you explain Senator DeMint? The process and the people involved are the same with each primary. You would think that we would either have two die-hard conservatives (little "s" socialists) or two RHINOs (big "S" socialists) as our esteemed representatives in the senate. It might just be that one of them is lying. (Well, lying more, anyway. I mean, they're politicians, right?) Senator DeMint is probably much more of a RHINO than Graham is a conservative. This would make Senator DeMint the more disingenuous of the two. And there's enough in his past voting record to make the case that his actions do not square neatly with his rhetoric.

Say what you will about Graham, he votes the way he talks: like a big, big brother.  

Voices of Doctors

For more information, go to TakeBackMedicine.com .