Y'all is Po"



The John Edwards Poverty Tour

Not a Peace Process But a Surrender Process

"This is Munich all over again".."We have two choices: We can find a way to be reasonable and surrender, or we can defeat them."

Newt Gingrich from a recent speech.

Hillary and Obama: They Actually Said This:

Hillary Clinton at the 7/23/07 Democratss debate/press conference.....

"I think it is a problem that Bush was elected in 2000. I actually thought somebody else was elected in that election, but" ...(Applause.)

Perhaps Mrs. Clinton does not remember...but The Treason Times (NY Times) reported on 11/12/01:

"A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward."

Another Times article that day by Richard L. Berke said that the...

"comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots solidifies George W. Bush's legal claim on the White House because it concludes that he would have won under the ground rules prescribed by the Democrats."

B. Hussein (Barry) Obama made the following extraordinary comment at the same Democrat function. The question was: "Would you be willing....to meet....during the first year of your administration....with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

"....one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they're going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses."

Coginchaug River
Cleanup July 28

From today's Hartford Courant:

MIDDLETOWN - - The Jonah Center for Earth and Art will hold a river clean up July 28 from 9 a.m. to noon along the Coginchaug River in the North End. The goal is to remove plastic bottles, tents and tarps left by campers and other debris from the site of the Jonah Center's proposed boat launch adjacent to the city's closed landfill, and from the 20 acres of newly acquired open space on the river's floodplain. Volunteers are needed at both locations. Volunteers can reach the boat-launch site via the Middletown recycling center, at North Main and Johnson streets. Go left after entering the recycling center, park near the brush piles, and follow the access road to the north. The open space location on the Coginchaug floodplain, known as the Salafia property, may be reached from the west end of Catherine Street. Guides will be at these locations to direct volunteers..... For more information, call John Hall at 860-343-3259. Link to group's web site:
http://www.thejonahcenter.org/index.php

To help volunteers find the site here is a link to a Goggle map.






This is view a of my favorite little river, the Coginchaug, as it flows near my home in Middletown's West End. The riverbed and banks are fairly clean in my neighborhood although I have noticed quite a few cans and bottles and even one abandoned shopping cart. Conditions deteriorate rapidly, I have learned, at the area known as the city's North End peninsula near the confluence of the Coginchaug and the Mattabesset. Here debris has accumulated, carelessly discarded by campers, boaters and others. Fortunately, a group called Jonah Center for Earth and Art has put forth an ambitious plan to cleanup the area and develop it as an innovative center for ecological study and community activity. A boat launch is planned. The Jonah Center's web site offers a wealth of information about the area.

The Jonah Center for Earth and Art wants to transform the neck of land at the confluence of the Mattabesett and Coginchaug Rivers (the “North End Peninsula”) in Middletown, CT into an innovative educational facility and a major tourist destination. This property, which now appears to be urban industrial blight, is rich in educational and recreational possibilities.

The Jonah Center for Earth and Art wants to teach — by means of a truly living, evolving facility — how energy from the sun is captured and then circulated through the ecosystem, from plants to microbes to complex human culture. This learning center will be integrated with the present recycling center and evolve into a multi-faceted science and cultural center that will eventually include space for performing arts, planetarium shows, and more.

Here is an aerial view of the area from the group's web pages:

Rock Around Iraq:
Dingy Harry and the Losers



More political theater from Harry Reid and the defeatists in the Senate. Reid has announced a pajama session, an all nighter to crank out meaningless resolutions against our mission in Iraq.

"The round-the-clock debate Tuesday night through Wednesday morning was intended as a way of pressuring Republican senators as well as Bush to act sooner rather than later on a change of course in Iraq."
Source:MyWay News

Ahh, Sordid Political Notes*....

Clinton / Obama - Writing in the July 23 issue of Newsweek Anna Quindlen challenges Hillary Clinton to persuade Barack Obama to be her running mate. Saying "Your Web site says help make history. Go ahead. I dare you,".....she prefaces that with:

"He would have to decide he would be willing to coexist with a strong woman. But it seems as though he already does that at home. You would have to be willing to let a charismatic man steal some of your thunder, but you do that at home, too. This would be a political marriage of convenience, sure, but one that could excite the country. The president has driven the nation into a ditch, and the American people are standing by the side of the road with their thumbs out. Everyone is poised for big change, big ideas. Do the big thing that also happens to be the right thing."

Filling the Young Skulls With Mush - At the primary school in Funafuti, children learn about climate change from the age of six. Most expect to emigrate. "Because my home island will sink under the water, and there will be no place for me to live," explains Vaimaila Teitala, aged 12. Manuao Taloka, 13, says: "Australia and America and England don't take notice of us because we're too small, and they want to keep their factories and cars."

Ohhh, the mean, selfish industrialized nations want to keep their factories and cars! Yes, let's ban factories and cars and level the global playing field. Everyone should be poor and live a meter or two above the level of the sea.

The quoted passage above is from an article titled " S.O.S.: Pacific islanders battle to save what is left of their country from rising seas" in The Independent (U.K.)


* h/t Paul Krassner (btw, where is he now?)

Tags: climate crisis anna quindlen paul krassner

Middletown Born Artist William Ranney
Featured in New Exhibition




Self Portrait (1839)

The current issue of Antiques and The Arts Weekly (Newtown CT) contains a featured article on Middletown born painter William Tylee Ranney (1813-1857). Currently thru August 19 an exhibition of some 60 of the artist's paintings is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Titled "Forging an American Identity: The Art of William Ranney", this exhibition was organized by Sarah E. Boehme at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody WY where its tour began.

Some 60 works comprise "Forging an American Identity: The Art of William Ranney," on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through August 19. It was organized by Sarah E. Boehme, formerly of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo. (where it began its tour) and now director of the Stark Museum of Art in Orange, Texas. She notes that new information about the painter and recently discovered paintings by him offer "new insights" in this "unparalleled gathering of the artist's most significant paintings."

Born in Middletown, Conn., the son of a sea captain, Ranney moved at age 13 to Fayetteville, N.C., where he lived with an uncle and trained as a tinsmith. His experiences in this bustling gateway to the West filled his imagination with a grand sense of the American character and landscape.

Moving to Brooklyn around 1833, Ranney began studying drawing and painting. Three years later, inspired by news of the siege of the Alamo, he volunteered to serve in the war for Texas independence. During his brief sojourn in Texas, he absorbed a wealth of observations about the culture, mores and landscape of the American West that would inspire his most famous paintings. His wife Margaret later observed that her husband was "so charmed by everything he saw…the wild enchanting prairies, the splendid horses," that he never would have returned East "but for the strong love he had for his mother."

The painting "Portrait of Margaret Ranney", the artist's wife is at the Cromwell (CT) Historical Society. Some additional biographical information and images follow:

RANNEY, William, artist, born in Middletown, Connecticut, 9 May, 1813; died in West Hoboken, New Jersey, 18 November, 1857. Tile name that was given him at baptism was William Tylee, but he never used the latter. At the age of thirteen he was taken to Fayetteville, North Carolina, by his uncle, where he was apprenticed to a tinsmith, but seven years later he was studying drawing in Brooklyn. When the Texan struggle began, Ranney enlisted, and during the campaign became acquainted with many trappers and guides of the west. After his return home he devoted himself mainly to portraying their life and habits. Among his works are" Boone's First View of Kentucky," " On the Wing," " Washington on his Mission to the Indians" (1847), " Duck-Shooting," which is in the Corcoran gallery, Washington, "The Sleigh-Ride," and "The Trapper's Last Shot." Many of these have been engraved. He was a frequent exhibitor at the National academy, of which he was elected an associate in 1850.
Source: Virtualology.com

William Ranney Veterans of 1776 Returning from the War

William Ranney Duck Shooters (1849)

William Ranney Advice on the Prairie (1853)

In this, his late "Self-portrait,” circa 1856–1857, Ranney presented himself as a thoughtful, intense, mature figure, whose profession is indicated by the barely visible end of a paint brush at the bottom of the picture. Private collection.

Chertoff and Gut Feelings:
Summer of Risk?

Gut Feeling, Summer of Risk....
I believe we're entering a period this summer of increased risk. We've seen a lot more public statements from Al Qaeda. There are a lot of reasons to speculate about that but one reason that occurs to me is that they're feeling more comfortable and raising expectations. In the last August, and in prior summers, we've had attacks against the West, which suggests that summer seems to be appealing to them. I think we do see increased activity in South Asia, so we do worry about whether they are rebuilding their capabilities. We've struck at them and degraded them, but they rebuild. All these things have given me kind of a gut feeling that we are in a period of increased vulnerability.
Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Director (Chicago Tribune 7/10/07)


On Voters' Gut Feelings....
But this is a democracy. You vote, you do the best you can with the choices presented, and you show the appropriate opposition to the guy who seems most likely to bring trouble. (I think that is one reason for the polarity and division of politics now. No one knows in his gut that the guy he supports will do any good. But at least you can oppose with enthusiasm and passion the guy you feel in your gut will cause more trouble than is needed! This is what happens when the pickings are slim: The greatest passion gets funneled into opposition.)
Peggy Noonan (Wall Street Journal 7/13/07)


Just the Facts Please, Cut the Gut Feelings....
The other day, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said he has “kind of a gut feeling that we are in a period of increased vulnerability.”
Let me say this in the vernacular of my youth in New York: Gut feelings I can get from the very nice lady who takes in my shirts at the cleaners. From the Secretary of Homeland Security I expect facts.
From Luke Skywalker I expect to hear there may be a “disturbance in the force.” From Michael Chertoff I expect oversight of the Transportation Safety Administration.
Rich Galen, Mullings (7/13/07)

Big Al: The Goracle and His Lies

Thanks to Paul Atroshenko , an Australian artist for the above image of the all knowing, all seeing Albert Gore. The always controversial, but mostly liberal, Camille Paglia had this to say about the image in a recent posting:

"This is wonderful! I burst out laughing at the self-divinizing apotheosis of that egregiously pulpit-pounding, wannabe preacher, the Rev. Al Gore."


She opines further in answer to a reader's take on human caused climate crisis:

"Bravo for your invigorating deconstruction of current propaganda! I too am very concerned about the potential damage to Democrat credibility coming from the grab-bag Gore crusade, with its wild exaggerations and hypocritical sanctimony. It does make liberals look like ditzes -- the last thing the party needs in a presidential campaign where no-crap national security issues will be paramount. Environmentalism is of vital importance to our future, but it cannot be based on lies."

Bob Parks: To Our Americans Serving in Iraq

This is a "must watch" 10 minute video which sticks it to Pelosi, Reid, the Clintons et al!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Yc3wYJOtI

Also visit Bob Parks at: http://blackandright.mensnewsdaily.com/

My country, 'tis of Thee,
Sweet Land of Liberty
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountain side
Let Freedom ring.

Samuel F. Smith 1832

Kaziah Hancock, Extraordinary American

This extraordinary woman has painted 100's of portraits of fallen U.S. soldiers and sent them home to their families. Unable to have children of her own these fallen heroes become part of Kaziah Hancock via her paintings of them.She lives on a goat ranch in Utah.These portraits are given to the families; she does not accept any money for them although she is an accomplished artist who has sold works for thousands of dollars.

Tagged: kaziah hancock