Wednesday, July 04, 2018

4th of July (C'mon Mueller! Give us back our Independence!)

   

11 comments:

  1. How to celebrate the Fourth of July if you can't deal with America right now[Click] “Alternative things to do if you’re not a fan of hotdogs, fireworks or immigration policy.” This list of suggestions should have come out a couple of weeks ago!

    From stone age tools to false teeth: the secrets of Amsterdam’s canals[Click] A construction project in the Dutch capital has led to hundreds of thousands of artefacts being dug up – and they have now gone on display.

    —Alan

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  2. Being less than totally satisfied with Sea Monkey, I just tried a brand new web browser called Vivaldi. Since it is screen reader unfriendly, I have uninstalled it again. *sigh*

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  3. Oh, Lordy....
    --Alan

    Quote of the Day
    July 4, 2018 at 6:26 pm By Taegan Goddard

    “I try to be careful with the language that I use. When people ask me questions, for example, about why is Mr. Trump so submissive to Vladimir Putin, and whether or not Mr. Trump fears that the Russians have something on him, I say, I don’t know. Perhaps. Maybe. I just don’t want to get into details about what I know or don’t know. I have to be very mindful of my obligations as far as classified material is concerned.”

    — Former CIA Director John Brennan, quoted by the New York Times.

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    1. Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene II
      Marc Antony speaks at Caesar’s funeral:

      Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
      I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
      The evil that men do lives after them;
      The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
      So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
      Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.
      If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
      And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
      Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest
      (For Brutus is an honorable man;
      So are they all, all honorable men),
      Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
      He was my friend, faithful and just to me,
      But Brutus says he was ambitious,
      And Brutus is an honorable man.
      He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
      Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
      Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
      When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;
      Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
      Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
      And Brutus is an honorable man.
      You all did see that on the Lupercal
      I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
      Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
      Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
      And sure he is an honorable man.
      I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
      But here I am to speak what I do know.
      You all did love him once, not without cause.
      What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?—
      O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
      And men have lost their reason!—Bear with me;
      My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
      And I must pause till it come back to me.

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  4. Sis, who often sees popular postings that I miss, tells me Trump supporters were outraged that NPR posted seditious material today...The Declaration of Independence.

    As I told her, that's nothing unique to Trump's supporters. We can laugh and jeer, but the fact is, such ignorance of one's own country's foundational document is both sad and most alarming. If they are taught nothing else in school, American children ought at least to be taught to recognize The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.

    Prompted by Sis' report, I myself posted The Declaration of Independence on my Facebook page this evening. The more widely disseminated it is, the better. It got two reactions, a like and a love, within the first five minutes. But then, my FB friends tend to be a pretty smart bunch.

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    1. Here's the Alternet article:

      Trump Fans Accuse NPR of ‘Taxpayer Funded Partisan Advocacy’ After It Tweets Out the Declaration of Independence — Again - Click

      In fairness, a few of the charges leveled against King George do sound like they could be accurately leveled against Pres. Donald. OTOH I'm kind of surprised Trump supporters would notice such similarities.

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    2. Now I must refresh my memory about the bill of particulars.

      Alan

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    3. Hmmm, maybe we really do need to have a Second Civil War. I'm in.

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    4. Hmmm..... I don't see much there that could be confused with Trump, really. There are a lot of currently obscure references, though... which seem to be clarified by links from the Wikipedia text.

      Alan

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  5. They were upset last year, too! Dim bulbs.

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