The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month: We Will Remember Them

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

- Laurence Binyon

We will remember the fallen British soldiers:



We will remember the fallen Canadian soldiers:



We will remember the fallen American soldiers:



In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae

Here Come The Atheists

And they're spending gobs of money to whiz on Christmas.

According to a New York Times story, four free-thought groups -- representing atheists, agnostics and humanists -- are launching ad campaigns.

The American Humanist Association has produced a commercial that will air on NBC, and its advertisements will also appear in major national newspapers and on buses. Commercials will feature passages from religious texts that denounce gender equality and promote slavery, followed by compassionate quotes from well-known humanists.

Oh brother.  Are they bored or what?  I notice that their campaign only bashes the Christian faith.  That tells me everything I need to know.

So much for reason.

Paul Weller: The Changingman

The Mod Father, in fine form.

And So It Begins...

 Predictably, social security is on the chopping block.  Who exactly is vested in the social security system?  Workers, that's who.  Well, I have a few suggestions for the politicians who are about to ask the working class, young and old, to "suck it up" yet one more time...

The Paradox of Freedom

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my Prime Minister? Well I do, a lot.

There are, after all, a lot more votes — a lot more — in being anti-Israeli than in taking a stand. But, as long as I am prime minister, whether it is at the UN or the Francophonie or anywhere else, Canada will take that stand, whatever the cost. Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israeli mob tells us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are a threat to all of us.

G-d bless you PM Harper.

Happy Tuesday: The "Math Is Hard" Edition

Sarah Palin on QE2

Not the British monarch - Quantitative Easing, part Deux.

(In which our daring Federal Reserve Chairman has committed to printing six hundred billion dollars to buy up the debt which is funding the Federal Government's deficit spending for the next eight months).

Quoted (with some condescension - she's Sarah Palin, they can't help themselves) in the Financial Times blog.

I don't want to excerpt too much - that post, and this one on dissenters within the Fed itself, need to be read in their entirety (please). (The posts are short, important and free.)

But Palin here demonstrates the honesty that I think is necessary (emphasis is mine):

We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings. We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It’s the only way we can get our economy back on the right track.

Well alright then. Careful what you wish for...

Ike Has Something He'd Like to Say Before He Leaves

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

There's a Light....

...over at the Frankenstein Place. (Belated Halloween entry, and, btw, don't dream it, be it.)

Jogging Memories Through Film

In the summer of 1968, my brother and I would stay up and watch TV at night. Channel 11 out of Tacoma would show the TV series “Twelve O’clock High” and “Secret Agent” from 11 PM to 1 AM (I forget which was first). After that we would often find some old movie. I don’t remember many of them. But there is one film from the late ‘40’s that I thought about from time to time. I didn’t remember what it was, but I remember that the bad guy was a writer of some kind. He tricked a young woman, a relative, into writing a suicide note. And I remember a pickup truck speeding down the road.

Now, I often will scroll through the cable TV grid and see what is playing on TCM, and I will record a movie if it looks interesting. A couple of weeks ago, TCM played a film called The Unsuspected with Claude Raines as a host/writer of a radio program that talked about real murder cases. He had a ward who had, mistakenly, been thought to have been killed in a fire on a ship. She returned, much to the chagrin of her relatives who were looking forward to the large inheritance from her estate. I thought it looked interesting, so I recorded it. As I watched the film, I thought that it looked like it might be the film I had seen in 1968. It was.

Was it an enjoyable film? Yes. Was it the greatest film I had ever seen? No. But to see a film that I somewhat remembered after all of these years was a joy.

One of the things with old films is to see things that your recognize. I think I have told of seeing American Graffiti for the first time. There is a scene where Richard Dryfus tries to open his old locker. Not only did I recognize that locker as being in “C” wing of Petaluma High School right across from Mrs. Stonitch’s room, his “old locker” was two to the right of my real life locker when I was a senior.

Sometimes an old film shows you something you only know from movies or TV. This week I was watching a Joan Crawford/John Wayne film on TCM called Reunion in France. Early in the film, Joan Crawford is at a party. At the party she is introduced to a couple of wives of Nazi officers in Paris. One of them is a blond. I recognized her voice and her mannerism of holding her hands in front of her chest as she spoke. It’s Mrs. Thurston Howell III! I looked it up, and it was Natalie Schafer.

I like old films. Maybe because they are so familiar – even if I had never seen them before.