Seamus Heaney, Nobel laureate, poet of remarkable range and colloquial eloquence, is dead. He was 74… NY Times… Irish Times… Boston Globe…Telegraph… New Yorker… Chronicle of Higher Ed… Poetry… Sean Brady…
Month: August 2013
Jeremiad, August 30, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Monday, August 26, 2012
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Thumb-in-the-Eye vs. High Trump
Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky (a/k/a PPINK) has predictably filed a lawsuit against a new Indiana abortion clinic regulation, set to take effect in January. You could see this one coming a mile away.
Ostensibly about a statewide law, the lawsuit really is about whether PPINK’s Lafayette facility will continue killing babies. You see, Lafayette only gets a live abortionist to make dead babies one day per week, and he, she or it does not do surgical abortions even then. The other four or five days per week, PPINK accommodates its customers by dispensing chemical abortifacients by “telemedicine,” calling up Dr. Skype for a pro-forma imprimatur on the dastardly deed. Servicing the felt needs of the Sexual Revolution is what PPINK and other PP affiliates are all about.
And, just to prove I’m a fair-minded guy, opposing Planned Parenthood by any nonviolent means necessary increasingly is what Indiana Right to Life is all about. God may have called Christians to faithfulness, not to success, but Indiana Right to Life intends to succeed, by God.
Thus we were treated, during legislative debates on the law, to earnest expressions of deep concern for the health and safety of PPINK’s soon-to-be-ex gravidas. (I’m not saying that pro-lifers wish harm to abortion-minded women, but the safety of abortion for women is not the raison d’être of right-to-life groups. You can look it up.) The Right-to-Life expression of concerns for women’s health and safety was to requires PPINK Lafayette (and the other zero Indiana clinics) providing non-surgical abortions to have separate procedure, recovery and scrub rooms like surgical centers starting January 1 (Chicago Tribune) although women won’t be at the clinic when complications occur.
The statute now challenged proves that Indiana Right to Life can successfully stick a thumb in the eye of Planned Parenthood. How Christlike!
The lawsuit, in due course, will prove that Federal Courts trump the Indiana Legislature.
If you put feticide on one side of the scale and disingenuousness on the other side, feticide is by most accounts far graver. But without trivializing the arguments in favor of doing little evils in order to frustrate greater evils (a formulation that I’m sure some of the proponents of little evils would reject, but better than which I cannot now do), and despite having undergone the bloodless lobotomy of law school, I just can’t take some positions, and may God have mercy on me if that’s the sin of scrupulosity.
On a lighter note, I’d like to think that it’s a bit of progress when the face of Planned Parenthood is
instead of
(“like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without good sense“) and the face of Pro-life is
instead of
* * * * *
“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Friday, August 23, 2013
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Unhinged e-mail
It’s a sad thing when an old friend comes unhinged. I got this e-mail recently. I regret that I don’t know how to created colored text in HTML, and it’s not worth learning just to add some of the color of the original.
(While we’re at it: does anyone know why crazy people us all-caps, centered text, and multiple explanation points?)
BOYCOTT “THE BUTLER”AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THIS TRAITOR
BOYCOTT THIS MOVIE
What a disgrace to Mrs. Nancy Reagan! Boycott this movie!
America we must not forget
JANE FONDA as NANCY REAGAN?
This cannot go around too much. Those of us that were living in those years will never forget that she was a traitor and did a lot of damage
to our boys.
She has now been chosen to play Nancy Reagan in her life story. I am sending this one out because so many do not know this truth…and also because she was on 3 times this week talking about her new book…And how good she feels in her 70’s. She still does not knowwhat she did wrong. Her book just may not make the best seller list if more people knew…
also…
Barbara Walters said:
Thank you all. Many died in Vietnam for our freedoms. I did not like Jane Fonda then and I don’t like her now.
She can lead her present life the way she wants and perhaps
SHE can forget the past, but we DO NOT have to stand by
without comment and see her “honored” as a “Woman of the Century.”
(I remember this well) For those who served and/or died….
NEVER FORGIVE A TRAITOR. SHE REALLY WAS A TRAITOR!!
and now President OBAMA wants to honor her……!!!!
In Memory of Lt. C. Thomsen Wieland who spent 100 days
at the Hanoi Hilton [Famous North Vietnam Prison]
IF YOU NEVER FORWARDED ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE PLEASE FORWARD THIS SO THAT EVERYONE WILL KNOW!!!!!!
A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED. KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA
This is for all the kids born in the 70’s and after who do not know and didn’t have to bear the burden that our fathers,
mothers and older brothers and sisters had to bear.
Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the ‘100 Women of the Century.’
BARBARA WALTERS WRITES:
Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others
have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed
during the Vietnam War.
The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot.
The pilot’s name is Jerry Driscoll, a River Rat.
In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF Survival School
was a POW in Ho Lo Prison the ‘Hanoi Hilton.’
Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed,
and dressed in clean PJ’s, he was ordered to describe for a
visiting American ‘Peace Activist’ the ‘lenient and humane
treatment’ he’d received.
He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp
Commandant ‘s feet, which sent that officer berserk.
In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision (which permanently ended his flying career) from the Commandant’s frenzied application of a wooden baton.
From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E’s). He spent 6 years in the ‘Hanoi Hilton’…the first three
of which his family only knew he was ‘missing in action’.
His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and clothed treatment in preparation for a ‘peace delegation’ visit.
They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that they were alive and still survived. Each man
secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand. When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man’s
hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: ‘Aren’t you sorry you bombed babies?’ and ‘Are you grateful for the
humane treatment from your benevolent captors?’
Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper. She took them all without missing a beat…At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POW’s she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper…Three men died from the subsequent beatings.
Colonel Carrigan was almost number four but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day.
I was a civilian economic development adviser in Vietnam, and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years.
I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one year in a cage in Cambodia; and one year in a ‘black box’ in Hanoi. My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Banme Thuot, South Vietnam, whom I buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border.
At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs. (My normal weight is 170 lbs). We were Jane Fonda’s ‘war criminals…’
When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi, I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her. I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real treatment we POWs received…and how different it was from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as ‘humane and lenient.’
Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees, with my arms outstretched with a large steel weight placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane.
I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda soon after I was released. I asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She never did answer me.
These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who
should be honored as part of ‘100 Years of Great Women.’ Lest we forget…
‘100 Years of Great Women’ should never
include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots.
There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Hanoi Jane ‘s participation in blatant treason, is one of them.
Please take the time to forward to as many people as you possibly can. It will eventually end up on her computer and
she needs to know that we will never forget.
RONALD D. SAMPSON, CM Sgt,
USAF 716 Maintenance Squadron,
Chief of Maintenance DSN: 875-6431 COMM: 883-6343
PLEASE HELP BY SENDING THIS TO EVERYONE IN
YOUR ADDRESS BOOK. IF ENOUGH PEOPLE SEE THIS MAYBE HER STATUS WILL CHANGE.
UPDATE:
Same friend now warns me that the Colorado fires were set by Muslims.