I love birds chirping at 4:13 in the morning

out the window.  I do.
It makes you glad to be alive,
glad it's warmer, and happy
to be up.
---------
#saying.my.prayers

A. Seek Allies.

Q.  What could the black kids in the streets of Baltimore learn from the recent progress of the gay rights workers -- in the public and private spheres?

I will never forget one of my better law professors explaining to us.  She was prescient, had a big class, and could see some of what was coming, I suspect.

Take This Back Home with You
is what she seemed to say, in so many words.
Even if you don't end up working in the legal firms, or even the legal field, take what I am teaching back to your homes, your neighborhoods and communities, your workplaces, your peoples.  Take this knowledge, take this better understanding of how laws and policies work, and put it to use in your worlds.

She wanted that, you could tell.
Like many law professors, she was Jewish -- many of the women on the law faculty who were not, were once married to the Jews.  You don't have to believe law and order came down from the heavens, necessarily, to understand for good reason, that particular ethnicity has been involved in the legal system in good numbers from the beginning...

I went home this past weekend -- to the home in Thornton where I was raised, where we moved in 1972, days before I turned 4...  Chicago was changing then, rapidly. As was the country...

Fires are burning in the streets again now, in baltimore.
Police officers are being attacked for who they are, not what they've done. We're "tribing up", not thinking of each other as individuals using reason rather than violence.

Today -- win or lose -- gay people across the country will have representatives arguing that they should all be able to get in the game, no more sitting the bench thinking there's no place on the team.  No more moving across the country in search of open playing fields. 

No more getting judged by how the group acts, even if there's no way you'd be in the mix doing that...

Baltimore burns, in places
and sadly, the cause once again seemingly is for Blacks Only.

It's not about Police Brutality,
it's about Black Men.
After the videotape of the man being shot multiple times in the back was released, I was hopeful.  Everybody was on board.  But then, the black pundits and columnists reminded us this was their turf, and it got spun again into a racial issue.  (I even heard more than one person sound like the answer is that more white men should be shot dead by police when acting violently, as if that would even things out.)

The gay rights movement will win today, even the Court rules against them, because they are there, where change happens.

The poor blacks, burning off anger in the streets, will hoist a reparations-seeking spokesman or two, who will be handsomely rewarded himself, and might even create ripples of change, advantaging others.  Say what you will, but the Jesse Jacksons, say, do acquire granted concessions, except in the long run, without the systematic changes, such indulgences don't go very far.

Seek Allies.
Define your Cause.
Read, Read, Read, Read.
Know Your Histories, yours and mine.

Get it through the courthouse doors.  You can get attention throwing your heels, fighting back, burning tires, tipping cars.  But eventually, you need to turn to the scholars, the level-headed reasoners, to bring it home. 

Season of Life.

Bengal, Baltimore... death, drones...
If you merely followed the headlines, and not the weather patterns, you could be excused for thinking death and destruction were upon us.

But today, the work going on in the Court,
the work going on in the classrooms,
the work going on in our heads,
trumps the deadly intentions
and disastrous deeds
so many commit to.

Never forget:  Spring is the season of life.
The green always turns out, and covers all,
as the poem goes...

Grass

By Carl Sandburg*

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work—

                                          I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

                                          What place is this?

                                          Where are we now?

                                          I am the grass.

                                          Let me work.
--------------
* "Poetry is a pack-sack of invisible keepsakes. Poetry is a sky dark with a wild-duck migration. Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment."
...
H. L. Mencken called Sandburg "a true original, his own man." No one, it is agreed, can deny the unique quality of his style. In his newspaper days, an old friend recalls, the slogan was, "Print Sandburg as is." It was Sandburg, as Golden observes, who "put America on paper," writing the American idiom, speaking to the masses, who held no terror for him.

As Richard Crowder notes in Carl Sandburg, the poet "Had been the first poet of modern times actually to use the language of the people as his almost total means of expression.... Sandburg had entered into the language of the people; he was not looking at it as a scientific phenomenon or a curiosity.... He was at home with it." Sandburg's own Whitmanesque comment was: "I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass. Did you know that all the work of the world is done through me?" He was always read by the masses, as well as by scholars. He once observed: "I'll probably die propped up in bed trying to write a poem about America."

Sandburg's account of the life of Abraham Lincoln is one of the monumental works of the century. Abraham Lincoln: The War Years alone exceeds in length the collected writings of Shakespeare by some 150,000 words. Though Sandburg did deny the story that in preparation he read everything ever published on Lincoln, he did collect and classify Lincoln material for thirty years, moving himself into a garret, storing his extra material in a barn, and for nearly fifteen years writing on a cracker-box typewriter. His intent was to separate Lincoln the man from Lincoln the myth, to avoid hero-worship, to relate with graphic detail and humanness the man both he and Whitman so admired. The historian Charles A. Beard called the finished product "a noble monument of American literature," written with "indefatigable thoroughness." Allan Nevins saw it as "homely but beautiful, learned but simple, exhaustively detailed but panoramic ... [occupying] a niche all its own, unlike any other biography or history in the language." The Pulitzer Prize committee apparently agreed. Prohibited from awarding the biography prize for any work on Washington or Lincoln, it circumvented the rules by placing the book in the category of history. As a result of this work Sandburg was the first private citizen to deliver an address before a joint session of Congress (on February 12, 1959, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth).
...
What he wanted from life was "to be out of jail,... to eat regular,... to get what I write printed,... a little love at home and a little nice affection hither and yon over the American landscape,... [and] to sing every day." He wrote with a pencil, a fountain pen, or a typewriter, "but I draw the line at dictating 'em," he said. He kept his home as it was, refusing, for example, to rearrange his vast library in some orderly fashion; he knew where everything was. Furthermore, he said, "I want Emerson in every room."
...
"Sandburg was writing for the children in himself ... for the eternal child, who, when he or she hears language spoken, hears rhythm, not sense."   ~ Verlyn Klinkenborg

Career

Held many odd jobs, including work as milk-delivery boy, barber shop porter, fireman, truck operator, and apprentice house painter; sold films for Underwood and Underwood; helped to organize Wisconsin Socialist Democratic Party; worked for Milwaukee Sentinel and Milwaukee Daily News; city hall reporter for Milwaukee Journal; secretary to Milwaukee Mayor Emil Seidel, 1910-12; worked for Milwaukee Leader and Chicago World, 1912; worked for Day Book (daily), Chicago, 1912-17; System: The Magazine of Business, Chicago, associate editor, February to early fall, 1913 (returned to Day Book); worked for Chicago Evening American for three weeks in 1917; Newspaper Enterprise Association (390 newspapers), Stockholm correspondent, 1918, ran Chicago office, 1919; Chicago Daily News, 1917-30, served as reporter (covered Chicago race riots), editorial writer, and motion picture editor, later continued as columnist until 1932; wrote weekly column syndicated by Chicago Daily Times, beginning in 1941. Presidential Medal of Freedom lecturer, University of Hawaii, 1934; Walgreen Foundation Lecturer, University of Chicago, 1940. Contributed newspaper columns to Chicago Times Syndicate and radio broadcasts such as "Cavalcade of America" and foreign broadcasts for the Office of War Information during World War II. Lectured and sang folk songs to his own guitar accompaniment.

May Day!

Monday morning,
Looking ahead: this is a week of incremental greatness...

Don't believe me;
just watch.
 ;-)
==============
* Make it a great week, all!

How to Get On in Life.

Sunday home version.

Don't promise when you're happy;
don't reply when you're angry;
and don't decide when you're sad.

April is the cruelest month.

It's the weather:
With the barometric instability, you can get fooled if you let your guard down.
And then when it's safe to finally relax, you can keep your defenses up too long...

Still, summer comes.

An apple a day...

keeps anyone away,
if you throw it hard enough.

I Love the Correction* (ouch) ...

on this Alessandra Stanley story about Bruce, his Kardashian family, and what it means to be a woman.

Correction: April 25, 2015
A earlier version of this article mischaracterized Bruce Jenner’s stepchildren. Mr. Jenner has three stepdaughters and one stepson, not four stepdaughters.
______
Subhead:

Rob says:
Do Your Homework, Lady;
This Whiteboy keepin' his Junk!

=========================
 ADDED:
First Bruce. Now Frank?
Did Frank Bruni of the NYT just come out as a Republican too?

Jeb Bush’s tack is more comprehensible. He utters much of what religious conservatives want to hear. But he also brings enough gays or Republicans who support same-sex marriage into his campaign to give Americans a signal of where so many of us in the party really are.

(Oh nevermind... I forgot he was writing the memo "in character".)

Inheriting the Earth...

Hell yeah!
-----
*What? That was my meek...

Rise and Shine.

Another new day...

(and a Spring Saturday, to boot...)

Make it a great one, no matter where you're headed.

One of Yours.

Big Surprise Tonight*: Bruce Jenner Comes Out as a ... Republican!

When asked about Barack Obama addressing LGBT rights in his State of the Union, the 65-year-old former Olympic athlete said that didn’t affect him much.

“I’ve always been more on the conservative side,” Jenner said.

Sawyer, looking shocked, asked if he identifies as a Republican, to which Jenner answered, “Yes.”

How do you like them apples?
--------------

* I don't watch trash tv, but I do read the Internet and skim the stories...

The man sounds megalomaniacal. His "Cause in Life" ... “This is why God put me on this earth…to deal with this issue.”

Jenner confirmed that he has not had gender reassignment surgery yet, but it could be down the line.

“I would do it so quietly no one would ever know.”

Maybe next, with lines like that, he could try his hand at being a comedian: The E! series also announced today that Bruce(?) will star in a gender-transitioning reality show set to premiere in July.

My take? A lot of young athletes miss out on an awful lot of early life, because of time spent in the pool, or on the track. A lot of them... (can we say it?) for that reason, are just plain dumb.

I wonder too, if years of recreationally taking hormones affects the brain, the way taking steroids affects the mind and body.

Let me just say, between the Kardashian crowd and the attention-seeking, I don't think this personal story will turn out well for him, once the spotlight dims and he has to simply live with him/herself, cameras off.

Perhaps what we have here, is an attention whore, which all transgenders clearly are not... (and which, of course, even non-transgendered people can be. Like with drugs, I think as your tolerance builds up, these types of addicts resort to wilder, and odder, ways of seeking attention...)

Somebody who loves him ought to pull Bruce(?) aside, like you do a typical teenager who is down in the dumps with worry over something trivial and offer this advice: "While it no doubt means the world to you right now, the truth is... the world is so big, it really is not concerned with the trivial details of your little life, when in the grand scheme of things, nobody cares about this as much as you."

Privacy, I think, is something he'll come to regret, one day, casting aside... Call it a hunch.
------------

** Something you think might be weighing just as heavy on his conscience -- the killing of the woman in the traffic accident via his alleged vehicular negligence -- apparently was not discussed.

Nor is there anything online about whether Diane followed up and asked him if he would prefer to see Jeb, Scott, Marco, Ted or Chris as his party's primary nominee. (I guess Bruce got to just speak freely on his own terms, without a decent interviewer asking any hard questions of him. Missed opportunity. What if God put him on earth not to spread the family-reveal details of his cross-dressing hobby over the years and where he intends to go with it, but to urge people to take more care behind the wheel, to avoid taking other people's lives? Like I say, I just don't see this life ending well, once the tv series' are through with him, and there is no more audience to compete for or entertain... Best of luck to you though, ma'am. Honestly.)


*** I think what makes Bruce Jenner here different from other transgendered people, like Jennifer Finney Boylan, say, is that the latter actually has a life, aside from her gender identification.

Jenny Boylan has published twelve books-- a collection of short stories, three adult novels, four YA books written under a pseudonym, two memoirs, and two middle grade books in the "Falcon Quinn" series. Her next book will be a memoir about "parenthood in two genders," STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU, scheduled for publication by Random House in 2013. Before coming to Colby College in 1988 she worked with the original cast of Saturday Night Live as managing editor of "American Bystander" magazine, and also served on the editorial staffs at Penguin Books, Viking Press, and E.P. Dutton Inc. She was the Charles Walker Bassett "Professor of the Year" at Colby in 2000-01. Her academic concerns include fiction and nonfiction writing, American literature, and gender studies.  

Again, being a prized young athlete, Bruce likely did not develop any intellectual, social, artistic, or other life-related skills. Like an uneducated young actor with nothing to fall back on, I do believe that post-Olympics, Bruce has probably spend a good part of his life trying to define or "find" himself, to use the new-age lingo. Freed from the burden of having to actually work for living, he was able to create and pass through multiple families, all the while enjoying his hobby (cross-dressing) privately, before the Kardashian crowd taught him how to desire the warm glow of media attention, which he seems to shun... and then invite back into his intimate family life.

Again: it really might help to remember that despite the megalomania, you are just a person inside, Bruce. Just one individual, in a country and a world of many. Relax, dig deep, and try to find something to focus your life on, other than solely yourself, your family, or your attention-getting needs. (btw? All women are not into displaying themselves like that, which perhaps he never picked up on being around look-at-me! ladies, like Kris, Kim, Kylie and Kendall... Surely they're not in it for the money?)

Thanks Koch Brothers!

Gov. Scott Walker uses Koch money to help influence the vote in Wisconsin, and he's proud of the changes he's made on behalf of rentiers over workers up here.*  Speaking with pundit provocateur Glenn Beck, Walker gushed:

Deep, deep under fire and battle tested, I think I have extra layers of battle armor on there. You’re right: Madison, Wisconsin, which is kind of to the left of Pravda… it is the home of the progressive movement, the home of—AFSCME was started there, collective bargaining was started there… it was the state that had the first income tax. Who would have thought that that city and the state of Wisconsin that hasn’t gone Republican since 1984, we would be able to take on the public employee unions four years ago and not only win that battle but win the recalls against a whole bunch of state senators, win the recall against me and the lieutenant governor in the state, but now Wisconsin when it comes to public employee unions we have no seniority or tenure, we can hire and fire based on merit, we can pay based on performance, we’re the 25th state in the nation to have Right-To-Work, we require photo ID for voting, we’ve defunded Planned Parenthood and pushed pro-life legislation and we’ve passed concealed carry and castle doctrine, we cut taxes by $2 billion—in fact property taxes are lower today than they were four years ago—who would have thought all that would happen? But we said shortly after the 2010 election that we had to go big and we had to go bold and it was put up or shut up time. Even in Madison, Wisconsin, we were able to get that done.

But if you follow the money..
I would like to call for transparency, and ask Univ. of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse, and her second husband Laurence Meade -- a white transplanted Hoosier who romanced the professor online -- to be transparent about the recent donations to their blog, solicited both directly via PayPal, and indirectly pocketing a commission for products sold at Amazon.com.

The professor blogs daily, and offers dubious legal analysis on behalf of Scott Walker;  she and her husband videotaped and mocked government workers legally protesting the elimination of collective bargaining rights in our state.

* Note:  Gov. Walker never went after the tenured professors here, who collect hundreds of thousands annually, while teaching perhaps 2 classes a semester, and neglecting legal scholarship once tenured.  Publishing a personal blog really is not the same as publishing scholarly legal analysis, akin to the weighty topics discussed on other legal blogs, where the scholarship is both recognized, cited by courts, and accompanied by publication in legal journals where these specialized matters are studied and discussed.

Althouse-Meade made no secret of their partnership:  Mr. Meade, a middle-aged father, divorced and with no college degree, is the non-working stay-at-home spouse, sharing the state employee's spousal benefits, and marital tax deduction that -- can we be honest? -- was meant to support the growth of families with children, assuming children are better raised with one parent in the home not working during their primary years.

Mr. Meade does take neighbors' dogs to the dog parks, where he photographs and posts on his own blog pictures of Madison-area pets, presumably with the owners' consent.  And he is a big opiner on his wife's blog, where his lack of education is proudly on public display, as in this post regarding Charlie Hustle:

Dozens of games that season, I would buy cheap center field tickets because my 3 yr-old was crazy about Eric Davis and she loved to chant his name at the end of every top inning. I still have the ball he tossed us.

There's a photo in SI when the Reds were fighting to hold onto first place against the Giants. Hal Morris is going head over heels into the home dugout after a high foul pop the just above the dugout is being caught by me and my two buddies. Well, one of my buddies is actually catching the ball. But, HEY, I had my hands up and I was reaching for it! 

...

All of Pete's marriages were gay. But he did not like his nipples played with. I remember reading that in his Playboy interview. What a great hitting gay weirdo he was.

The greatest hitting gay weirdo ever.

He's joking, of course.
But what's not really funny is how he, and his wife, are collecting money for ignorant and polarizing comments like that -- using social issues, esp. re. teh gays, to distract voters -- and the numerous posts defending Gov. Walker's legally questionable actions on her personal blog.

Who is donating?
Why not continue the Wisconsin tradition of transparency, and tell us who is donating how much and who is "employed" by the blog's revenues?

It is so easy for politicians' PACs to pump money into social media sites like that, where the professor trades in her years of legit teaching at the state law school, to influence the uneducated (*and perhaps fearful?)  white male voters in the state like her husband, who believe her legal work to be solid.  It's not.  She has a bias in her bonnet, and ought to decide which Master she is serving:

■ the state university that employs her and expects disciplined and unbiased scholarship;
or
■ the as-yet undisclosed money collected online to keep the blog spewing lowest-common-denominator opinions, which have noticeably been influenced in recent years by the presence of the undereducated and unemployed dependent she keeps at home.

(unless of course, for tax purposes, he's an "employee" of  her anonymous donation-soliciting blog...)
------------


* Gov. Walker is also looking to suck taxpayer funds from public schools, available to all children, and subsidize, via tax redistribution vouchers, those families that choose private -- often religious-based -- educations for their children.  No thank you.

Walker, who's beginning his second term, delivered the spending plan to the GOP-controlled Legislature amid growing interest in his likely Republican presidential run. The $68 billion budget covering taxing and spending in Wisconsin over the next two years is the last one Walker will release before the 2016 campaign for the White House.

Walker said his budget would help deliver the "American dream" to people who have felt left out in recent years.

"Our plan is based on growth and opportunity, which leads to freedom and prosperity for all," he said. "Secondly, our plan will use common sense reforms to create a government that is limited in scope and, ultimately, more effective, more efficient, and more accountable to the public."

But his plan is already running into opposition from Republicans and Democrats alike, who cite concerns over a 13 percent cut to the University of Wisconsin System, no increase in money for public schools and a 30 percent increase in borrowing for roads and infrastructure spending.

Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, clad in a red Wisconsin badger T-shirt beneath her black blazer, said proposed cuts to the UW system and public schools would lead the state in the wrong direction.

"This budget we think is going to be balanced on the backs of our middle-class families and our children," Taylor said.

Walker's budget would cut $300 million from the UW System. Tuition would be frozen over the next two years, while UW would be given more freedom from state oversight and laws.  Both Republicans and Democrats have said the cut is too large and will do irreparable harm both the university and state economy.

Walker is also calling for removing a 1,000-student lid on the private-school voucher program. Going forward, the program would be available to students transferring in from public schools at any point, and also private school students entering kindergarten, the first grade or ninth grade. Money to pay for it would come from state aid sent to those public schools losing the student.
...
School spending would be held in check to fulfill Walker's re-election promise to lower property taxes. Bills on a median-valued $151,000 home could go down $5 in each of the next two years.

Don't spend it all in one place, American Dreamers.

Imagine There's No Borders...

I wonder if you can.

From Libya to the Middle East to our own country here at home, it's interesting to see what happens when we replace logic, reason, and the rule of law with guns and the non-respect of rules or borders.

How can we complain here at home when we see what we've done to Libya and the Middle East? That's destabilization, my friends.

We really don't have a refugee crisis like that here at home.
Just ... new neighbors.

(and the press, once again, is determined to make future elections about the importance of... gay marriage, standing up against "bullying", and Bruce Jenner's new look. While they're still studying and solving "Who is Responsible for the Jewish Holocaust", many voters are looking at all our military men and women have accomplished and wondering, "Who is Responsible" for the ongoing holocaust and displacement our "Good" wars have wrought? Another day, friends. Put that aside for another day... your children and grandchildren can figure it out, while we sit stunned wondering about the bigger issues of the day*... "Does Bruce still have his penis, or not?")

Imagine there's no gender...

-------------

* I hope BaBa WaWa Diane Sawyer asks the questions that people REALLY care about... Like, were you ever charged with your actions that clearly resulted in the woman's death in the traffic accident, when you and your trailer rear-ended her in heavy traffic, pushing her into the path of an uncoming vehicle whose impact cost the woman her life?

What was THAT woman's name, Bruce?
Do you feel any shame over your inattention behind the wheel, and taking a life? Isn't all this "look at me! I'm as pretty as a lady will ever be..." a bit Kardashian, given the woman's recent death caused by your actions?

What are your priorities as a "woman", Bruce?
Is it all superficial show -- "girls as glam", or is there anything real still under there? Like perhaps, compassion, a conscience, or simply the need to run away from your high-end circus?

Lady Executive.*

or,
Get On Off the Bus.


* (which translates to Marsupial in Italian, I hear...)

Hey Kids, Let's Put on a Show!

Another NBC reporter's war story crumbles...
Knowingly, or unknowingly, it appears NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel was cast in a deadly rescue mission ... that wasn't:

NBC News on Wednesday revised its account of the 2012 kidnapping of its chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, saying it was likely that Mr. Engel and his reporting team had been abducted by a Sunni militant group, not forces affiliated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

In a statement posted on the NBC News website Wednesday evening, Mr. Engel said that a review of the episode — prompted by reporting from The New York Times — had led him to conclude that “the group that kidnapped us was Sunni, not Shia.” *  He also wrote that the abductors had “put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite shabiha militiamen.”

...

Interviews by The Times with several dozen people — including many of those involved in the search for NBC’s team, rebel fighters and activists in Syria and current and former NBC News employees — suggested that Mr. Engel’s team was almost certainly taken by a Sunni criminal element affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose alliance of rebels opposed to Mr. Assad.  The group, known as the North Idlib Falcons Brigade, was led by two men, Azzo Qassab and Shukri Ajouj, who had a history of smuggling and other crimes.

 ...

NBC executives were informed of Mr. Ajouj and Mr. Qassab’s possible involvement during and after Mr. Engels’s captivity, according to current and former NBC employees and others who helped search for Mr. Engel, including political activists and security professionals. Still, the network moved quickly to put Mr. Engel on the air with an account blaming Shiite captors and did not present the other possible version of events.

...

NBC’s own assessment during the kidnapping had focused on Mr. Qassab and Mr. Ajouj, according to a half-dozen people involved in the recovery effort:

• NBC had received GPS data from the team’s emergency beacon that showed it had been held early in the abduction at a chicken farm widely known by local residents and other rebels to be controlled by the Sunni criminal group.
• NBC had sent an Arab envoy into Syria to drive past the farm, according to three people involved in the efforts to locate Mr. Engel, and engaged in outreach to local commanders for help in obtaining the team’s release.

• Ali Bakran, a rebel commander who assisted in the search, said in an interview that when he confronted Mr. Qassab and Mr. Ajouj with the GPS map, “Azzo and Shukri both acknowledged having the NBC reporters.”

Several rebels and others with detailed knowledge of the episode said that the safe release of NBC’s team was staged after consultation with rebel leaders when it became clear that holding them might imperil the rebel efforts to court Western support.

Abu Hassan, a local medic who is close to the rebel movement, and who was involved in seeking the team’s release, said that when the kidnappers realized that all the other rebels in the area were working to get the captives out, they decided to create a ruse to free them and blame the kidnapping on the Assad regime. 

“It was there that the play was completed,” he said, speaking of the section of road Mr. Engel and the team were freed on.

Thaer al-Sheib, another local man connected with the rebel movement who sought the NBC team, said that on the day of the release “we heard some random shots for less than a minute coming from the direction of the farm.” 

He said that Abu Ayman, the rebel commander credited with freeing the team, is related by marriage to Mr. Ajouj, and that he staged the rescue.

Mr. Engel, in his statement, said he did not have a “definitive account of what happened that night.” He acknowledged the group that freed him had ties to his captors, but said he had received conflicting information.

“We managed to reach a man, who, according to both Syrian and U.S. intelligence sources, was one of Abu Ayman’s main fund-raisers,” he wrote. “He insists that Abu Ayman’s men shot and killed two of our kidnappers.”

Mr. Engel said the kidnapping “became a sensitive issue” for Mr. Ayman. “Abu Ayman and his superiors were hoping to persuade the U.S. to provide arms to them,” he wrote. “Having American journalists taken on what was known to be his turf could block that possibility.”

In his Vanity Fair article, Mr. Engel described one of his captors lying dead. In his statement Wednesday, he acknowledged that he did not see bodies during the rescue. ...

~ By: RAVI SOMAIYA, C.J. CHIVERS and KARAM SHOUMALI 

Is it worse as a reporter to be honestly deceived, or to come back and hype your narrative, omitting inconvenient facts that contradict the righteousness of the rebel-support drama?

 (I know the answer for liability purposes;  I'm just asking about personal pride in the fact-gathering/story-telling craft, your job well done and all...)

--------------

*  I'm just a singer of simple songs.
I'm not a real political man.
I watch CNN, but I'm not sure
I could tell ya, the difference in Iraq and Iran...
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
and I remember this from when I was young...
Faith Hope and Love are some good things He gave us...
and the greatest is Love.
~ Alan Jackson.

Who Do You Love?
~ Thorogood & the Destroyers.

Undercover President.

I'm Lovin' It... :

Nor did the restaurant’s staff notice Mrs. Clinton, until this reporter, tipped off that she had dined there, telephoned. 

The Chipotle manager, Charles Wright, insisted at first that the tip must have been false.

Related Coverage

• Was That Hillary Clinton Pumping Gas?     APRIL 12, 2015 

But he offered to review his security-camera recordings, and quickly reversed himself. There was Mrs. Clinton, in a bright pink shirt, ordering a chicken burrito bowl — and carrying her own tray.

“The thing is, she has these dark sunglasses on,” Mr. Wright said. “She just was another lady.”

Some people in the restaurant at the time had even noticed that a man was taking pictures of Mrs. Clinton, he recalled, but no one had wondered why.

His employees, he said, were “kicking themselves right now.” Mr. Wright, 29, said that he was a Republican and was not planning to support her, but that knowing he had missed a chance to meet her “really hurts.”

Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet!

I was at the Twins home opener v. the Royals today.
OK -- define "at". How close must one be? Proximity wise...

Our 27th floor (temporary) office overlooks Target Field and Target Center, where the TimberWolves play and the Stones, I see on the electronic sign, are coming this summer. (Aside: I remember their original goodbye tour in '89, when they were shutting down Start Me Up, which is something we  -- the girls' segregated gym class for gymnastics* -- were required to do gym routines to in 8th grade, post-tour '81-82.)

Ah, public school!

But back to the story: we could see the electronic screen in the outfield, and about 1/3 of the left-field tiered sears. Fun!

The small fridge and microwave are by the wall of windows, plus my seat is two in, and as I make it a point to get up and move every hour or less, it was fun to watch people trickle in for the 3pm game...

Did they win?
I hear not.
But I won today.
It was a blue-sky day
with fluffy white clouds.

And the work continues tomorrow...












------------------------
* Pure hell, but tolerable for the winter sport cycle only because we came together on Fridays for free gym, and could use the horse (pass), the bars (ditto), mats (are you kidding me?), the rhythmic gym balls, and... the tramp-o-line! Yes kids, we had a tramp at my junior high in those pre-exorbitant liability days. A gym-sized tramp, taut and smelling like gym, not one of these puny backyard models you see in every other backyard in the right neighborhoods nowadays.

If you passed up the other stations and waited your turn around, spotting, you got maybe 3-5 minutes to jump, jump, jump -- somtimes getting in 3 or 4 times...
Some kids did tricks, or flopped; I just jumped.

Too bad they don't have trampoline jumping in the Olympics.
People would be more fit for the fun of it.


(Who really wants to dance around with a weighted ball extended out in their arm anyway??)

Better Hillary Than Jeb Bush...

Mayor BigBucks says our fates are predetermined: Jeb v. Hillary.

When asked what he thought of the growing field of presidential candidates, Mr. Bloomberg was equally definite. “Hillary and Jeb are the only two who know how to make the trains run,” he said, to get people back to work.

Put me down for supporting the woman candidate over the little Papito...

Hillary knows the job, and she's up for the in-fighting in Washington.

Barack Obama wasn't.


He thought it would all be done in his name. It wasn't.

As far as the Bushes, the energy money, the Republican Bush dynasty... that doesn't work so much for people like me.

Sure, we'd all like to craft a dream candidate, but then you grow up and see the world you'll inherit and you think: those Bush boys still haven't paid for all they've broken over there; we should reward them with more?

Guess I'm not such a pushover as Mamacita Barbara...
They are not America's family.
Not the America I know...

Sunday morning...

You sure look fine!
54 degrees in the pre-7am hours...
Clear now, but they are predicting:
perhaps some showers later today...
Bring it on!

For you can
let it rain
on my windowpane
well I got my own rainbow...

Make it a great Sunday, all.

Whether the weather be fine...
or whether the weather be not.
Whether the weather be cold...
or whether the weather be hot.
Oh, we'll weather the weather,
whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not!

Money Talks...

But it can't sing and dance
Sometimes it just squawks...
But if you'll pardon me
I'd like to say: We'd do okay...
Forever in blue jeans, babe.

Happy Saturday.
Spring has officially sprung here in downtown Minneapolis, yesterday being the turning point when we went from quarter-sized but irregularly shaped white flakes blowing up and parallel to our 27th floor windows at around 10am, to peeling off the coats down to jackets at getting-off-the-bus time.

Today, sleeves!
I'm always amazed how that happens. One day it's still dead and winter. The next day... it's not.

I also like working weekends, and am staying over, a decision made easier by a temporary closure of the main highway cutting through St. Paul this weekend to work on a bridge overpass. Got to detour through old University Avenue, and I find it's nice being immersed -- stop and go -- in history and architecture first thing in the morning. Like checking out the Chittenden-Eastman building. (It's cooler than it looks in the picture... early-morning light and all...)

In short,
another fine Saturday.

"He Came Instead as a Peacemaker..."

“Let ‘Em Up Easy”—Lincoln in Richmond

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Chris Mackowski

Lincoln in Richmond (Battles & Leaders)

The historical record doesn’t say who was more excited on April 4, 1865—150 years ago today: Tad Lincoln, celebrating his twelfth birthday that day, or his father, Abraham, who was finally entering Richmond after five springs of war. “Thank God that I have lived to see this!” Lincoln said.

The Federal breakthrough at Petersburg on the morning of April 2 had forced the Confederate withdrawal from Petersburg and Richmond. To the president, the welcome news seemed almost surreal. “It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years,” Lincoln said, “and now the nightmare is gone. I want to go to Richmond.”

Up the James River he went, accompanied by his young son and chaperoned by Admiral David Porter. Thousands of freed slaves thronged the pair, driving home the true fruits of the Federal victory. Finally, a detachment of soldiers muscled their way in and escorted the Lincolns on their walking tour.

“I should have preferred to see the President of the United States entering the subjugated stronghold of the rebels with an escort more befitting his high station,” Porter later said, “yet that would have looked as if he came as a conqueror to exult over a brave but fallen enemy. He came instead as a peacemaker, his hand extended to all who desired to take it.”

Indeed, while visiting the home of his Confederate counterpart, Jefferson Davis, someone asked Lincoln what he intended to do to Southerners now that the Confederacy had fallen. Lincoln replied that he didn’t intend to issue specific orders on that score, but he nonetheless made his wishes clear to the army: “If I were in your place, I’d let ’em up easy.”

Lincoln’s magnanimous tone proved vital in the days ahead. As Grant hunted Lee’s army to ground and forced their surrender, triggering a domino of subsequent surrenders across the South, Lincoln’s magnanimity guided surrender negotiations. This proved particularly important in the wake of Lincoln’s assassination, just days after the Appomattox surrender. “With malice toward none,” the president had said in his second inaugural address, “with charity for all.”

This vision guided Grant as he oversaw the surrenders. “I knew his goodness of heart,” Grant said of Lincoln in his memoirs, “his generosity, his yielding disposition, his desire to have everybody happy, and above all his desire to see all the people of the United States enter again upon the full privileges of citizenship with equality among all.”

Tad Lincoln spent this birthday touring the Confederate capital with his father, visiting the Confederate White House, the Virginia state capital, and Libby Prison. They eventually returned to the river and, by boat, to City Point. Such sights would make an impression on any curious twelve year old. I wonder, though, what impression their encounter with the freed slaves made on him.

“They all wanted to shake hands with Mr. Lincoln or his coat tail or even to kneel down and kiss his boots!” Porter had said of the encounter. Tad, knowing all his father had gone through over the previous four-plus years but perhaps not truly understanding it, must have had his eyes opened at least a little.

War is Over ?

One hundred and fifty years ago today, General Lee mounted Traveller and rode away, gallantly, from Wilmer McLean's farmhouse after effectively accepting General Grant's terms of surrender.  His men were allowed to return to their farms, Lee having successfully negotiated for them to keep their horses or mules for plow work, and some say the Civil War in this country ended.

Not true, exactly.

An honest argument could be made that that Civil War didn't really end until Civil Rights legislation was enacted a century later.  Some might argue that the Civil War still continues today...

In a few days, we'll be noting the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln.  Had he lived, things perhaps would have turned out differently, letting them up easy and all...

“It speaks to the value of human life.”

Chris Stewart, an attorney for the victim’s family, said on Tuesday night that the incident is bigger than race.

“It goes to power itself. This was a cop who felt like he could just get away with shooting someone that many times in the back,” Mr Stewart said. “It speaks to the value of human life.”

This is why, I suspect, so many of the alternative media outlets (ie/ conservative or "law" blogs) are slow to cover the Walter Scott case this morning, while the foreign media outlets are responding to the news by running the story...

(Funny, Drudge usually eats video like this up.)

Quotes for the Day.

Sir Walter Scott:

O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive! *

and more:

A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.

The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow men; and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.

For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.

That's what I'm talking about...

-------------

* Yet Clare's sharp questions must I shun
Must separate Constance from the nun
Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!
A Palmer too! No wonder why
I felt rebuked beneath his eye.

"You Can't Do That! ....."

It's a popular hockey cheer,
chanted as an opposing player is taken away to serve time in the penalty box for a cheap hit.  Here, ("oh shit!") some bystander has captured the last moments of a dead man -- very much alive on the video -- running from a Po-lice Officer, as the frightened cop fires bullet after bullet in the direction of the running man's back.  Evidence will show how many found the moving target...

Lock this "officer" up, and don't let him back out until all questions are answered.

I don't know how Police Officers, or their unions, can spin away this video, and for the sake of justice, I hope the country stops work today and chants in unison...

"You Can't Do That! ....."

"Put your hands behind your back", indeed.
 ------------
“All we wanted was the truth, and through the process we’ve received the truth,” said Anthony Scott, Walter’s brother. “I don’t think that all police officers are bad cops, but there are some bad ones out there...”

Equal Protection of the Law.

The speech a president of the United States needs to be able to give, sooner rather than later:

Welcome to the United States of America. We are a nation of immigrants, a nation of opportunity. We are not a land of discrimination; we are a nation of equality under law. This is a nation where the son of a Kenyan immigrant may grow up to be president of the United States. Come to our shores and we make you this promise: We will treat you like everyone else. We will not discriminate against you based on your race, your color, your country of origin. And we will not discriminate in your favor either. Your children will be treated like our children. We will not discriminate in favor of your daughters on the basis of their race. But neither will we discriminate in favor of my daughters, Malia and Sasha, on the basis of theirs. We know that, like the marchers at Selma, you seek not special treatment but equal treatment, and that is what we promise you. You are welcome here, and we offer you a uniquely American constitutional guarantee. We promise you — our Fourteenth Amendment promises you equal protection of the law.