AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: An MIT linguistics professor
was lecturing his class the other day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. … But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.” A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”
Monday, October 13, 2014
Friday, October 10, 2014
Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings, op. 11 by Leonard Bernstein - YouTube
Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings, op. 11 by Leonard Bernstein - YouTube
SADNESS in SONG funeral of princess grace, kennedy
SADNESS in SONG funeral of princess grace, kennedy
Sunday, October 05, 2014
The Top 40: Comment on Will Ebola Be Death Knell for Democrats? [Bumped]
The Top 40: Comment on Will Ebola Be Death Knell for Democrats? [Bumped]: John Keynes, an immensely talented man who's vision was ruined by self-love, saw himself clearly: "We were not aware that civilization was a thin and precarious crust erected by the personality and the will of a very few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skillfully put across and guilefully preserved. We had no respect for traditional wisdom or the restraints of custom...As cause and consequence of our general state of mind we completely misunderstood human nature, including our own."
The Top 40: Comment on Will Ebola Be Death Knell for Democrats? [Bumped]
The Top 40: Comment on Will Ebola Be Death Knell for Democrats? [Bumped]: John Keynes, an immensely talented man who's vision was ruined by self-love, saw himself clearly: "We were not aware that civilization was a thin and precarious crust erected by the personality and the will of a very few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skillfully put across and guilefully preserved. We had no respect for traditional wisdom or the restraints of custom...As cause and consequence of our general state of mind we completely misunderstood human nature, including our own."
Thursday, October 02, 2014
Is a Cancer Cure Being Suppressed? – LewRockwell.com
Is a Cancer Cure Being Suppressed? – LewRockwell.com: How to cure cancer and wet macular degeneration
Careful analysis shows there are three ways to halt or slow the use of sugar by cancer cells for growth. (1) Limit the amount of refined sugar in the diet, a practice that also appears to be ignored by oncologists; (2) use 3-BP to inhibit hexokinase, the key enzyme that promotes use of sugar for cellular energy in cancer cells; or (3) inhibit the initial signal that signals living cells to use sugar rather than oxygen for energy. That initial signal is produced by a gene called hypoxia-inducing factor-1 (HIF-1). [Bioscience Reports Nov 15, 2013] Hypoxia is a state of oxygen deprivation.
The very same nutraceutical mixture that has been reported to spare hopeless patients from loss of vision was found by National Institutes of Health researchers to inhibit the key growth factor (vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF) by profoundly down-regulating its controlling microRNA 20b by -1366 fold. [PLoS One Dec 23, 2010] The nutraceutical mixture may also be an incomparable anti-cancer agent.
Careful analysis shows there are three ways to halt or slow the use of sugar by cancer cells for growth. (1) Limit the amount of refined sugar in the diet, a practice that also appears to be ignored by oncologists; (2) use 3-BP to inhibit hexokinase, the key enzyme that promotes use of sugar for cellular energy in cancer cells; or (3) inhibit the initial signal that signals living cells to use sugar rather than oxygen for energy. That initial signal is produced by a gene called hypoxia-inducing factor-1 (HIF-1). [Bioscience Reports Nov 15, 2013] Hypoxia is a state of oxygen deprivation.
The very same nutraceutical mixture that has been reported to spare hopeless patients from loss of vision was found by National Institutes of Health researchers to inhibit the key growth factor (vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF) by profoundly down-regulating its controlling microRNA 20b by -1366 fold. [PLoS One Dec 23, 2010] The nutraceutical mixture may also be an incomparable anti-cancer agent.
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello:
Richard Cory
They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town
With political connections to spread his wealth around
Born into society, a banker's only child
He had everything a man could want: power, grace, and style
But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be
Oh I wish that I could be
Oh I wish that I could be
Richard Cory
He freely gave to charity, he had the common touch
And they were grateful for his patronage and they thanked him very much
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
"Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head"
Richard Cory
They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town
With political connections to spread his wealth around
Born into society, a banker's only child
He had everything a man could want: power, grace, and style
But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be
Oh I wish that I could be
Oh I wish that I could be
Richard Cory
He freely gave to charity, he had the common touch
And they were grateful for his patronage and they thanked him very much
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
"Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head"
Saturday, September 13, 2014
The Wind in the Heights @ AMERICAN DIGEST
The Wind in the Heights @ AMERICAN DIGEST
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
-- Christina Rossetti
10,000 FEARED DEAD
-- Headline, New York Post, September 12, 2001
AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY I lived in Brooklyn Heights in, of course,
Brooklyn. The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge on May 24 of 1883
transformed the high bluff just to the south of the bridge into
America's first suburb. It became possible for affluent businessmen from
the tip of Manhattan which lay just over the East River to commute
across the bridge easily and build their stately mansions and townhouses
high above the slapdash docks below. Growth and change would wash
around the Heights in the 117 years that followed, but secure on their
bluff, on their high ground, the Heights would remain a repository old
and new money, power, and some of the finest examples of 19th and early
20th century homes found in New York City.
When I moved to Brooklyn Heights from the suburbs of Westport,
Connecticut in the late 90s, it was a revelation to me that such a
neighborhood still existed. Small side streets and cul-de-sacs were
shaded over by large oaks and maple that made it cool even in the summer
doldrums. Street names such as Cranberry, Orange and Pineapple let you
know you were off the grid of numbered streets and avenues. Families
were everywhere and the streets on evenings and on weekends were full of
the one thing you rarely see in Manhattan, children.
Brooklyn Heights had looked down on Wall Street and the tip of
Manhattan from almost the beginning. It hosted the retreat of Washington
from New York City during the Battle of Long Island, the first major
engagement of the Revolutionary War. To be in the Heights was to hold
the high ground and all the advantages that position affords.
Brooklyn Heights today enjoys a kind of armed hamlet existence in New
York. Outside influences such as crime, poverty and ghetto life don't
really intrude. Since it has long been a neighborhood of the rich and
the powerful of the city, it has been spared some of the more doleful
effects of city life. It doesn't have walls that you can see, but they
are there, strong, high and well guarded.
Traffic, that bane of New York life, is controlled in the Heights. To
the west, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, once planned to cut through
the Heights directly to the Brooklyn Bridge, was rerouted by a deft
application of money and power; placed below along the harbor. To the
east, all traffic coming off the Bridge is pushed along Cadman Plaza to
Court Street and off to Atlantic. This forms the eastern border of the
Heights whose edge is further delineated by the ramparts of Brooklyn
City Hall, Courts of all flavors and a rag-tag collection of government
structures that exemplify the Fascist Overbuilding movement of the early
70s when, expecting 'The Revolution,' governments built towards
gun-slits rather than windows. The south of the Heights is sharply
drawn with Atlantic Avenue, a street given over to a long strip of
fringe businesses and a corridor of Islamic-American mosques and souks
and restaurants. The north is quite simply the Brooklyn Bridge and its
approaches that shelter the now slowly evolving sector devoted to
overpriced raw loft spaces and bad art known as DUMBO, for "Down Under
the Manhattan Bridge Overpass."
The best thing about the Heights is the Promenade. This is a long
pedestrian strolling area that runs from Remsen on the south to
Cranberry on the north end. It's a brick walk high on the bluff above
the Expressway below. Over the baroque railing you can see far out into
the harbor, beyond the Financial District and Wall Street on the tip of
Manhattan, beyond the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to the distant
silhouettes of the cranes and wharfs on the Jersey Shore. You can see
north up the East River past the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan
Bridge to, maybe, the merest wisp of the Williamsburg Bridge. Across
from the railings are a selection of gardens and backyards with water
fountains and shaded benches. It is one of those hidden, off-to-the-side
areas of respite that are secreted across all the seven boroughs of the
city. You discover it by being taken to it by someone else who has
already been there.
The Promenade is a fine place on any day but best on a Sunday
afternoon when the weather is clear. Then you can stroll with your
fellow citizens and catch a bit of the constant breeze or a bracing
wind. Under most conditions, this wind is one of the best elements of
Brooklyn Heights. Usually you just take it for granted -- as you do all
the small mercies of life in New York City.
When the wind came from the south off the harbor those who lived on
the Heights got to breathe the sea air first before the rest of the
city had its way with it. And it usually did blow from the south even
if there were days when it blew in from the west across the southern tip
of Manhattan. At least, I think that it did on numerous days even if I
only remember it from one.
I don't remember the wind from that day because it blew hard and
long. The winter, spring and fall brought many blizzards and storms to
the Heights with winds that would howl over the roofs and pulse in the
chimney of my parlor floor apartment. In winter it would slam against
the stones of the facade and rattle the windows while rolling snow so
fine against the door that a dusty drift would work its way through the
weather stripping and into the foyer by morning.
So if I think about the storms I can say they always came to the
Heights on the big shoulders of a bigger wind, but I don't really
remember any one of those winds. In my memory, I just assume they were
there, a part of the storm. Winds always are a part of any storm. Just
as the French say "Never a rose without a thorn," so "Never a storm
without a wind."
Except once and then the storm came later. And even if that wind has
now become a faint foreign breeze moving over a distant landscape of
sand and rubble and blood, it rolls along still and will in time make
its way back to where it began.
The wind came when the pillar of fire became, in what seemed a moment
outside of time, a pillar of smoke. We had been standing on the
Promenade that morning in our thousands watching death rage at the
center of a beautiful September morning. It was a morning with a clear
and washed blue sky; the kind of rare New York morning when you can
believe, again, that anything is possible in that city of dreams that so
often dissolve into disappointment.
Anything, of course, except the two towers whose peaks were engulfed in flames.
Anything, it would seem, but what we were seeing.
And it was a morning, as I recall, that had no wind at all. That was
why the flames and the smoke from the flames went almost straight up
into the sky, a long sooted streak that bisected one side of the blue
sky from the other.
It was, except for this one insane thing happening in the middle of
our panoramic view from the Promenade, a most beautiful day; made even
more so by the absence of any irritating noise from passenger jets
overhead.
The last two jets into New York airspace that morning would be the
last for days to come. In New York you become so used to the sound of
jets overhead in New York that you don't really hear them. What you did
hear on that day was the silence of their absence. When the sound of
jets came back later that afternoon it was not the sound of passenger
jets but of F-16 fighters, and we were glad to hear them.
But in that mid-morning all we could see and think about were the
souls trapped in the twin torches about a quarter of a mile away from us
on the other side of the East River.
At a certain point in that timeless time you noticed that specks were
arcing out from the sides of the buildings from just above or just
below or just within the part that was in flames. Looking again you saw
that the specks were people flying out from the building and plunging
down the sides to disappear behind the shorter buildings that ringed the
towers. You tried to imagine what must have been going on in the
offices and rooms of that building that made leaping from 100 floors or
more above the ground the "better" option, but you didn't have that kind
of space left in your imagination. And so you looked on and watched
them leap and distantly, silently fall, locked within that morning that
had no time, in which all of what you had known, believed, and trusted
in came, at once and forever, to a sudden frozen halt.
And then the first tower came down.
We've all seen, most of us on television, what happened next. We've
all seen the dropping of the top floors into the smoke and then the
shuddering impact and then the rolling and immense cloud of ash that
exploded up the island of Manhattan overtaking thousands running north
and laying thick slabs of ash over everything in its wake. The tape was
played and replayed until, by order or consensus, it stopped being
played. World Trade Center and north up the island -- center stage in
death's carnival on that day.
That wasn't for me. I was part of the sideshow in Brooklyn Heights.
Lower Manhattan is a welter of thin 17th century streets lined with
tall 19th and 20th century buildings. When you take the mass of two
buildings the size of the Twin Towers, heat it to the point that steel
bends, and drop it straight down into the center of this maze, it does
not all go just one direction even if that's where the video cameras
are. It moves out radially in all directions. Standing on the Promenade
you are in front of many different channels for this atomized mass and
the plumes of smoke and what it holds will come at you. And it did, very
fast and very dark.
It seemed to come out of the streets that opened onto the South
Street Seaport like some Titan's grime clotted fingers, and roiled
across the river as if the distance was a few hundred feet rather than a
few thousand yards. You saw what was coming and you turned to flee from
this black wind with no storm, but there were thousands of others who
had come to watch and they too were turning to run out of the exits from
the Promenade that had, moments before seemed broad, but now impossibly
narrow.
As the wind-driven cloud came over us and things became murky then
dark, panic began and shouts and screams could be heard inside the dense
smoke. Through some miracle, the crowd ordered itself and those who had
brought children with them were eased out in the sudden darkness and
others followed in a rapid order. The cloud lightened and then darkened
again and the wind rose and fell away and came back. It rippled your
clothing, and the smoke must have had a smell to it because it hurt the
lungs when you breathed, but I don't remember the smell only the
sensation of small needles in my lungs and the gray mucus that came up
when I coughed.
The wind pummeled my back for the five minutes it took me to make my
way to my apartment, get inside and shut the windows. I stood there at
the windows and watched the others rush by, blurs in the smoke, and
noticed when, as suddenly as it had come up, the wind died away and the
air was almost still. The smoke and the ash still moved in the street
outside and high overhead. The day was still darkened but the initial
violence of the blast and the wind had passed.
In time, everyone had passed by as well and the street was empty
except for the settling smoke. I looked outside the window where a
Japanese maple grew and noticed that its wine-dark leaves were covered
with small yellow flecks. I looked down at the sill outside the windows
and saw the yellow flecks there as well.
At some point in the next few minutes it dawned on me that there
would be few bodies found in the incinerating rubble across the river. I
knew then -- as certainly as I have even known anything -- that all
those who had still been in the towers had now gone into the flame and
the smoke and that, in some way, the gleaming bits of yellow ash were
their tokens, were what they had become in that plunging crematorium.
And I knew that all they had become had fallen upon us as we ran in
the smoke; that we had breathed them in when the wind reached us; that
they were covering the houses and the sills and the cars and the
sidewalks and the benches and the shrubs and the trees all about us.
What they had become was what the wind without a storm had left
behind. Now that the wind had passed everything was, again, silent and
calm. The blue sky above the houses on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn
Heights were beginning to emerge from the fading smoke as the breeze of
the harbor shifted the plume away from us, moving it north, uptown, into
Manhattan, leaving the Heights again as an elite enclave, above and to
the side of New York City.
The yellow flecks remained, resting like small stars on the surface
of everything in the Heights for three days until the first rains came
on a late afternoon to wash them away. I walked out into that rain and
back down Pierrepont Street to the Promenade where for months yet to
come the fires would burn across the river.
The rain came straight down that day. There was no wind. As I walked
down the sidewalk I noticed the rainwater washing those yellow flecks
off the trees and the buildings and moving down the gutter to the drains
that would take it on to the harbor and on to the sea. And that water
was -- for only a minute or so before it ran clear -- golden.
Posted by Vanderleun at September 13, 2014 2:21 AM
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
-- Christina Rossetti
10,000 FEARED DEAD
-- Headline, New York Post, September 12, 2001
AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY I lived in Brooklyn Heights in, of course,
Brooklyn. The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge on May 24 of 1883
transformed the high bluff just to the south of the bridge into
America's first suburb. It became possible for affluent businessmen from
the tip of Manhattan which lay just over the East River to commute
across the bridge easily and build their stately mansions and townhouses
high above the slapdash docks below. Growth and change would wash
around the Heights in the 117 years that followed, but secure on their
bluff, on their high ground, the Heights would remain a repository old
and new money, power, and some of the finest examples of 19th and early
20th century homes found in New York City.
When I moved to Brooklyn Heights from the suburbs of Westport,
Connecticut in the late 90s, it was a revelation to me that such a
neighborhood still existed. Small side streets and cul-de-sacs were
shaded over by large oaks and maple that made it cool even in the summer
doldrums. Street names such as Cranberry, Orange and Pineapple let you
know you were off the grid of numbered streets and avenues. Families
were everywhere and the streets on evenings and on weekends were full of
the one thing you rarely see in Manhattan, children.
Brooklyn Heights had looked down on Wall Street and the tip of
Manhattan from almost the beginning. It hosted the retreat of Washington
from New York City during the Battle of Long Island, the first major
engagement of the Revolutionary War. To be in the Heights was to hold
the high ground and all the advantages that position affords.
Brooklyn Heights today enjoys a kind of armed hamlet existence in New
York. Outside influences such as crime, poverty and ghetto life don't
really intrude. Since it has long been a neighborhood of the rich and
the powerful of the city, it has been spared some of the more doleful
effects of city life. It doesn't have walls that you can see, but they
are there, strong, high and well guarded.
Traffic, that bane of New York life, is controlled in the Heights. To
the west, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, once planned to cut through
the Heights directly to the Brooklyn Bridge, was rerouted by a deft
application of money and power; placed below along the harbor. To the
east, all traffic coming off the Bridge is pushed along Cadman Plaza to
Court Street and off to Atlantic. This forms the eastern border of the
Heights whose edge is further delineated by the ramparts of Brooklyn
City Hall, Courts of all flavors and a rag-tag collection of government
structures that exemplify the Fascist Overbuilding movement of the early
70s when, expecting 'The Revolution,' governments built towards
gun-slits rather than windows. The south of the Heights is sharply
drawn with Atlantic Avenue, a street given over to a long strip of
fringe businesses and a corridor of Islamic-American mosques and souks
and restaurants. The north is quite simply the Brooklyn Bridge and its
approaches that shelter the now slowly evolving sector devoted to
overpriced raw loft spaces and bad art known as DUMBO, for "Down Under
the Manhattan Bridge Overpass."
The best thing about the Heights is the Promenade. This is a long
pedestrian strolling area that runs from Remsen on the south to
Cranberry on the north end. It's a brick walk high on the bluff above
the Expressway below. Over the baroque railing you can see far out into
the harbor, beyond the Financial District and Wall Street on the tip of
Manhattan, beyond the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to the distant
silhouettes of the cranes and wharfs on the Jersey Shore. You can see
north up the East River past the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan
Bridge to, maybe, the merest wisp of the Williamsburg Bridge. Across
from the railings are a selection of gardens and backyards with water
fountains and shaded benches. It is one of those hidden, off-to-the-side
areas of respite that are secreted across all the seven boroughs of the
city. You discover it by being taken to it by someone else who has
already been there.
The Promenade is a fine place on any day but best on a Sunday
afternoon when the weather is clear. Then you can stroll with your
fellow citizens and catch a bit of the constant breeze or a bracing
wind. Under most conditions, this wind is one of the best elements of
Brooklyn Heights. Usually you just take it for granted -- as you do all
the small mercies of life in New York City.
When the wind came from the south off the harbor those who lived on
the Heights got to breathe the sea air first before the rest of the
city had its way with it. And it usually did blow from the south even
if there were days when it blew in from the west across the southern tip
of Manhattan. At least, I think that it did on numerous days even if I
only remember it from one.
I don't remember the wind from that day because it blew hard and
long. The winter, spring and fall brought many blizzards and storms to
the Heights with winds that would howl over the roofs and pulse in the
chimney of my parlor floor apartment. In winter it would slam against
the stones of the facade and rattle the windows while rolling snow so
fine against the door that a dusty drift would work its way through the
weather stripping and into the foyer by morning.
So if I think about the storms I can say they always came to the
Heights on the big shoulders of a bigger wind, but I don't really
remember any one of those winds. In my memory, I just assume they were
there, a part of the storm. Winds always are a part of any storm. Just
as the French say "Never a rose without a thorn," so "Never a storm
without a wind."
Except once and then the storm came later. And even if that wind has
now become a faint foreign breeze moving over a distant landscape of
sand and rubble and blood, it rolls along still and will in time make
its way back to where it began.
The wind came when the pillar of fire became, in what seemed a moment
outside of time, a pillar of smoke. We had been standing on the
Promenade that morning in our thousands watching death rage at the
center of a beautiful September morning. It was a morning with a clear
and washed blue sky; the kind of rare New York morning when you can
believe, again, that anything is possible in that city of dreams that so
often dissolve into disappointment.
Anything, of course, except the two towers whose peaks were engulfed in flames.
Anything, it would seem, but what we were seeing.
And it was a morning, as I recall, that had no wind at all. That was
why the flames and the smoke from the flames went almost straight up
into the sky, a long sooted streak that bisected one side of the blue
sky from the other.
It was, except for this one insane thing happening in the middle of
our panoramic view from the Promenade, a most beautiful day; made even
more so by the absence of any irritating noise from passenger jets
overhead.
The last two jets into New York airspace that morning would be the
last for days to come. In New York you become so used to the sound of
jets overhead in New York that you don't really hear them. What you did
hear on that day was the silence of their absence. When the sound of
jets came back later that afternoon it was not the sound of passenger
jets but of F-16 fighters, and we were glad to hear them.
But in that mid-morning all we could see and think about were the
souls trapped in the twin torches about a quarter of a mile away from us
on the other side of the East River.
At a certain point in that timeless time you noticed that specks were
arcing out from the sides of the buildings from just above or just
below or just within the part that was in flames. Looking again you saw
that the specks were people flying out from the building and plunging
down the sides to disappear behind the shorter buildings that ringed the
towers. You tried to imagine what must have been going on in the
offices and rooms of that building that made leaping from 100 floors or
more above the ground the "better" option, but you didn't have that kind
of space left in your imagination. And so you looked on and watched
them leap and distantly, silently fall, locked within that morning that
had no time, in which all of what you had known, believed, and trusted
in came, at once and forever, to a sudden frozen halt.
And then the first tower came down.
We've all seen, most of us on television, what happened next. We've
all seen the dropping of the top floors into the smoke and then the
shuddering impact and then the rolling and immense cloud of ash that
exploded up the island of Manhattan overtaking thousands running north
and laying thick slabs of ash over everything in its wake. The tape was
played and replayed until, by order or consensus, it stopped being
played. World Trade Center and north up the island -- center stage in
death's carnival on that day.
That wasn't for me. I was part of the sideshow in Brooklyn Heights.
Lower Manhattan is a welter of thin 17th century streets lined with
tall 19th and 20th century buildings. When you take the mass of two
buildings the size of the Twin Towers, heat it to the point that steel
bends, and drop it straight down into the center of this maze, it does
not all go just one direction even if that's where the video cameras
are. It moves out radially in all directions. Standing on the Promenade
you are in front of many different channels for this atomized mass and
the plumes of smoke and what it holds will come at you. And it did, very
fast and very dark.
It seemed to come out of the streets that opened onto the South
Street Seaport like some Titan's grime clotted fingers, and roiled
across the river as if the distance was a few hundred feet rather than a
few thousand yards. You saw what was coming and you turned to flee from
this black wind with no storm, but there were thousands of others who
had come to watch and they too were turning to run out of the exits from
the Promenade that had, moments before seemed broad, but now impossibly
narrow.
As the wind-driven cloud came over us and things became murky then
dark, panic began and shouts and screams could be heard inside the dense
smoke. Through some miracle, the crowd ordered itself and those who had
brought children with them were eased out in the sudden darkness and
others followed in a rapid order. The cloud lightened and then darkened
again and the wind rose and fell away and came back. It rippled your
clothing, and the smoke must have had a smell to it because it hurt the
lungs when you breathed, but I don't remember the smell only the
sensation of small needles in my lungs and the gray mucus that came up
when I coughed.
The wind pummeled my back for the five minutes it took me to make my
way to my apartment, get inside and shut the windows. I stood there at
the windows and watched the others rush by, blurs in the smoke, and
noticed when, as suddenly as it had come up, the wind died away and the
air was almost still. The smoke and the ash still moved in the street
outside and high overhead. The day was still darkened but the initial
violence of the blast and the wind had passed.
In time, everyone had passed by as well and the street was empty
except for the settling smoke. I looked outside the window where a
Japanese maple grew and noticed that its wine-dark leaves were covered
with small yellow flecks. I looked down at the sill outside the windows
and saw the yellow flecks there as well.
At some point in the next few minutes it dawned on me that there
would be few bodies found in the incinerating rubble across the river. I
knew then -- as certainly as I have even known anything -- that all
those who had still been in the towers had now gone into the flame and
the smoke and that, in some way, the gleaming bits of yellow ash were
their tokens, were what they had become in that plunging crematorium.
And I knew that all they had become had fallen upon us as we ran in
the smoke; that we had breathed them in when the wind reached us; that
they were covering the houses and the sills and the cars and the
sidewalks and the benches and the shrubs and the trees all about us.
What they had become was what the wind without a storm had left
behind. Now that the wind had passed everything was, again, silent and
calm. The blue sky above the houses on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn
Heights were beginning to emerge from the fading smoke as the breeze of
the harbor shifted the plume away from us, moving it north, uptown, into
Manhattan, leaving the Heights again as an elite enclave, above and to
the side of New York City.
The yellow flecks remained, resting like small stars on the surface
of everything in the Heights for three days until the first rains came
on a late afternoon to wash them away. I walked out into that rain and
back down Pierrepont Street to the Promenade where for months yet to
come the fires would burn across the river.
The rain came straight down that day. There was no wind. As I walked
down the sidewalk I noticed the rainwater washing those yellow flecks
off the trees and the buildings and moving down the gutter to the drains
that would take it on to the harbor and on to the sea. And that water
was -- for only a minute or so before it ran clear -- golden.
Posted by Vanderleun at September 13, 2014 2:21 AM
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Tuesday, September 09, 2014
Global Warming
When Science is Settled - by Government :: SteynOnline: When Science is Settled - by Government
by Mark Steyn
September 1, 2014
by Mark Steyn
September 1, 2014
Serenity Prayer
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on The Man Who Carried the Dark Lantern:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
--Reinhold Niebuhr
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
--Reinhold Niebuhr
Wednesday, September 03, 2014
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on The Burning Hellcat
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on The Burning Hellcat: When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life’s preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime. That is why the true warrior cannot speak of battle save to his brothers who have been there with him. The truth is too holy, too sacred for words. -- Stephen Pressfield
From "Courage, as essay for Memorial Day:
From "Courage, as essay for Memorial Day:
Friday, August 29, 2014
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Friday, August 22, 2014
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes:
38 million black Americans commit five times as many violent crimes on 197 million whites as they receive, what you discover is that black perpetrators violently assault White victims TWENTY-FIVE times more frequently. When it comes to a specific kind of violent crime -- aggravated assault -- the number of black on white crimes is TWO HUNDRED TIMES HIGHER than white on black crimes. Oh, there’s an epidemic of racial violence in America, all right.
38 million black Americans commit five times as many violent crimes on 197 million whites as they receive, what you discover is that black perpetrators violently assault White victims TWENTY-FIVE times more frequently. When it comes to a specific kind of violent crime -- aggravated assault -- the number of black on white crimes is TWO HUNDRED TIMES HIGHER than white on black crimes. Oh, there’s an epidemic of racial violence in America, all right.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Windows 7 hangs at startup disk check
Windows 7 hangs at startup disk check: Windows 7 hangs at startup disk check
Friday, August 15, 2014
Thursday, August 07, 2014
I will not teach my kids about safe sex because there is no such thing | The Matt Walsh Blog
I will not teach my kids about safe sex because there is no such thing | The Matt Walsh Blog: we call these alcohol-fused humping sessions ‘safe,’ so long as they involve a layer of latex and a dose of steroids. We tell young people to wear condoms to protect against ailments like hepatitis and AIDS. The obvious insinuation here is that there is a ‘safe’ way to fornicate with a diseased stranger.
Wednesday, August 06, 2014
Monday, August 04, 2014
Saturday, August 02, 2014
Dr. John Sarno interview on back pain part 1 - YouTube
Dr. John Sarno interview on back pain part 1 - YouTube
Dr. Sarno's audiobook, The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain
Dr. Sarno's audiobook, The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain
Friday, August 01, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
The Top 40: Comment on The Arab world is suffering a crisis of humiliation.
The Top 40: Comment on The Arab world is suffering a crisis of humiliation.:
You must either conquer and rule or lose and serve, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or hammer--Goethe
You must either conquer and rule or lose and serve, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or hammer--Goethe
Sunday, July 27, 2014
A cunning way to deliver malware | Malwarebytes Unpacked
A cunning way to deliver malware | Malwarebytes Unpacked
Sometimes Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 can clean up badly infected systems.
There's a YouTube video on how to download the Rescue disk and move the ISO image to a CD or flash drive,
virus
Sometimes Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 can clean up badly infected systems.
There's a YouTube video on how to download the Rescue disk and move the ISO image to a CD or flash drive,
virus
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Monday, July 21, 2014
Saturday, July 19, 2014
The 48 Laws of Power: Robert Greene, Joost Elffers: 9780140280197: Books - Amazon.ca
The 48 Laws of Power: Robert Greene, Joost Elffers: 9780140280197: Books - Amazon.ca: 1. Never outshine the master
2. Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies
3. Conceal your intentions
4. Always say less than necessary
5. So much depends on reputation - guard it with your life
6. Court attention at all cost
7. Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit
8. Make other people come to use - use bait if necessary
9. Win thru your actions, neer thru argument
10. Infection: Avoid the unhappy and unlucky
11. Learn to keep people dependent on you
12. Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim
13. When asking for help, appeal to people's self interest, never to their mercy or gratitude
14. Pose as a friend, work as a spy
15. Crush your enemy totally
16. Use absence to increase respect and honor
17. Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability
18. Do not build fortresses to protect yourself - isolation is dangerous
19. Know who you are dealing with - do not offend the wrong person
20. Do not commit to anyone
21. Play a sucker to catch a sucker - seem dumber than your mark
22. Use the surrender tactic: transform weakness into power
23. Concentrate your forces
24. Play the perfect courtier
2. Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies
3. Conceal your intentions
4. Always say less than necessary
5. So much depends on reputation - guard it with your life
6. Court attention at all cost
7. Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit
8. Make other people come to use - use bait if necessary
9. Win thru your actions, neer thru argument
10. Infection: Avoid the unhappy and unlucky
11. Learn to keep people dependent on you
12. Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim
13. When asking for help, appeal to people's self interest, never to their mercy or gratitude
14. Pose as a friend, work as a spy
15. Crush your enemy totally
16. Use absence to increase respect and honor
17. Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability
18. Do not build fortresses to protect yourself - isolation is dangerous
19. Know who you are dealing with - do not offend the wrong person
20. Do not commit to anyone
21. Play a sucker to catch a sucker - seem dumber than your mark
22. Use the surrender tactic: transform weakness into power
23. Concentrate your forces
24. Play the perfect courtier
How To Tell Your Story In 30 Seconds - Business Insider
How To Tell Your Story In 30 Seconds - Business Insider
"Take your resume and LinkedIn profile and go through it thoroughly," says McDonald. If you're unemployed, focus on where you want to go and what you want to do.
"Take your resume and LinkedIn profile and go through it thoroughly," says McDonald. If you're unemployed, focus on where you want to go and what you want to do.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: REPEAT UNTIL YOU COMPREHEND: All high-level politicians in the for U.S. today are PSYCHOPATHS AND WHORES who are in it solely for the money and power. Aspiring to or holding high level office today is proof positive of the psychological and moral unfitness of the given person to hold high public office. This axiom transcends and applies equally to the facades known as the Republican and Democrat parties, and any and all antagonism between the two is nothing more than KABUKI THEATER. On Jamie Dimon, Sewage, and Other Variety | Barnhardt
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Friday, July 11, 2014
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
JOKE RACING
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello: Jeff Gordon announcement
Mooresville, NCJeff Gordon announced today that he was firing his entire pit crew.
This announcement followed Gordon's decision to take advantage of President Obama's stimulus scheme for employing Black Harlem teenagers.
The decision to hire them was brought about by a recent documentary on how welfare-drawing black street gangs from Harlem were able to remove a set of wheels in less than 6 seconds without proper equipment, whereas Gordon's existing crew could only do it in 8 seconds with thousands of dollars' worth of high tech equipment. It was thought to be politically correct and a bold move by Gordon's management team, as most races are won or lost in the pits.
UPDATE Gordon, however, got more than he bargained for. At the crew's first practice session, not only was the inexperienced black crew able to change all 4 wheels in under 6 seconds, but within
9 seconds they had repainted it, altered the VIN number, and sold the car to Dale Earnhardt, Jr., for 10 cases of Bud, a bag of weed, and some photos of Jeff Gordon's wife in the shower.
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello: Jeff Gordon announcement
Mooresville, NCJeff Gordon announced today that he was firing his entire pit crew.
This announcement followed Gordon's decision to take advantage of President Obama's stimulus scheme for employing Black Harlem teenagers.
The decision to hire them was brought about by a recent documentary on how welfare-drawing black street gangs from Harlem were able to remove a set of wheels in less than 6 seconds without proper equipment, whereas Gordon's existing crew could only do it in 8 seconds with thousands of dollars' worth of high tech equipment. It was thought to be politically correct and a bold move by Gordon's management team, as most races are won or lost in the pits.
UPDATE Gordon, however, got more than he bargained for. At the crew's first practice session, not only was the inexperienced black crew able to change all 4 wheels in under 6 seconds, but within
9 seconds they had repainted it, altered the VIN number, and sold the car to Dale Earnhardt, Jr., for 10 cases of Bud, a bag of weed, and some photos of Jeff Gordon's wife in the shower.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Do you know this simple way to make super-strong, but easy-to-remember passwords? | Page 4 | Komando.com
Do you know this simple way to make super-strong, but easy-to-remember passwords? | Page 4 | Komando.com
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
J0e._D._R0$e_1228
Wednesday, July 09, 2014
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
Monday, July 07, 2014
Sunday, July 06, 2014
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Daughter of the King, What do you think about abortion?
Daughter of the King, What do you think about abortion?: I’m for the abortion of abortion.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: Col. Jessep: Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom.... You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post.
A Few Good Men
A Few Good Men
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Monday, June 23, 2014
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Monday, June 16, 2014
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Monday, June 09, 2014
Heinlein’s Razor
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes:
Heinlein’s Razor in reference to the dean of science fiction writers, Robert Heinlein
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice."
Heinlein’s Razor in reference to the dean of science fiction writers, Robert Heinlein
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice."
Saturday, June 07, 2014
Saturday Uninformed Voter Joke | Grouchy Old Cripple
Saturday Uninformed Voter Joke | Grouchy Old Cripple: Saturday Uninformed Voter Joke
Glenn sent me this week’s uninformed voter joke.
A bartender is sitting behind the bar on a typical day, when the door bursts open and in come four exuberant uninformed voters. They come up to the bar, order five bottles of champagne and ten glasses, take their order over and sit down at a large table. The corks are popped, the glasses are filled and they begin toasting and chanting, “51 days, 51 days, 51 days!”
Soon, three more uninformed voters arrive, take up their drinks and the chanting grows. “51 days, 51 days, 51 days! ” Two more uninformed voters show up and soon their voices are joined in raising the roof. “51 days, 51 days, 51 days! ” Finally, the tenth uninformed voter comes in with a picture under her arm. She walks over to the table, sets the picture in the middle and the table erupts. Up jumps the others, they begin dancing around the table, exchanging high-fives, all the while chanting “51 days, 51 days, 51 days!
“The bartender can’t contain his curiosity any longer, so he walks over to the table. There in the center is a beautifully framed child’s jigsaw puzzle of the White House. When the frenzy dies down a little bit, the bartender asks one of the uninformed voters, “What’s all the chanting and celebration about?
The uninformed voter who brought in the picture pipes in, “Everyone thinks that uninformed voters are dumb and they make fun of us just because we voted for Obummer. So, we decided to set the record straight. Ten of us got together, bought that puzzle and put it together…the side of the box said 6-10 years, but we put it together in 51 days!”
Glenn sent me this week’s uninformed voter joke.
A bartender is sitting behind the bar on a typical day, when the door bursts open and in come four exuberant uninformed voters. They come up to the bar, order five bottles of champagne and ten glasses, take their order over and sit down at a large table. The corks are popped, the glasses are filled and they begin toasting and chanting, “51 days, 51 days, 51 days!”
Soon, three more uninformed voters arrive, take up their drinks and the chanting grows. “51 days, 51 days, 51 days! ” Two more uninformed voters show up and soon their voices are joined in raising the roof. “51 days, 51 days, 51 days! ” Finally, the tenth uninformed voter comes in with a picture under her arm. She walks over to the table, sets the picture in the middle and the table erupts. Up jumps the others, they begin dancing around the table, exchanging high-fives, all the while chanting “51 days, 51 days, 51 days!
“The bartender can’t contain his curiosity any longer, so he walks over to the table. There in the center is a beautifully framed child’s jigsaw puzzle of the White House. When the frenzy dies down a little bit, the bartender asks one of the uninformed voters, “What’s all the chanting and celebration about?
The uninformed voter who brought in the picture pipes in, “Everyone thinks that uninformed voters are dumb and they make fun of us just because we voted for Obummer. So, we decided to set the record straight. Ten of us got together, bought that puzzle and put it together…the side of the box said 6-10 years, but we put it together in 51 days!”
Monday, June 02, 2014
The Top 40: Comment on Our food-stamp program has many problems,
The Top 40: Comment on Our food-stamp program has many problems,
Davey Crockett on spending Govt money
NOT YOURS TO GIVE
From The Life of Colonel David Crockett, compiled by Edward S. Ellis
(Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884)
David Crockett
Member of Congress 1827-31, 1832-35
One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up
appropriatingmoney for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval
officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in it's support. The
Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:
"Mr. Speaker-- I have as much respect for the memory of the
deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if
suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our
respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead
us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go
into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this
money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We
have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as
we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to
appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have
been made to us upon the ground that it is debt due the deceased. Mr.
Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in
office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the
government was in arrears to him. Every man in this House knows it is
not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate
this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblence of
authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we
have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the
poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give
one week's pay to the object, and if every memeber of Congress will do
the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."
He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its
passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed,
and as, no doubt it would, but for that speech, it received but few
votes, and, of course, was lost.
Later, when asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, Crockett gave this explanation:
"Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the
Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention was
attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a large
fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could. In spite
of all that could be done, many houses were burned and many families
made homeless, and besides, some of them had lost all but the clothes
they had on. The weather was very cold, and when I saw so many women
and children suffering, I felt that something ought to be done for them.
The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their
relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it through as soon
as it could be done.
"The next summer, when it began to be time to think about the
election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of my
district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some time
off, I did not know what might turn up. When riding one day in a part
of my district in which I was more of stranger than any other, I saw a
man in a field plowing and coming toward the road. I gauged my gait so
that we should meet as he came to the fence. As he came up, I spoke to
the man. He replied politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly.
"I began: "Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called candidates, and----'
"Yes, I know you you are Colonel Crockett. I have seen you once before,
and voted for you the last time you were elected. I suppose you are
out electioneering now, but you had better not waste your time or mine. I
shall not vote for you again.'
"This was a sockdolager....I begged him to tell me what was the matter.
"Well, Colonel, it is hardly worth-while to waste time or words upon
it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last winter
which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the
Constitution, or that you are wanting in honesty and firmness to be
guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But I
beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to
avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to speak plainly to a
candidate for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intended by
it only to say that your understanding of the Constitution is very
different from mine; and I will say to you what, but for rudeness, I
should not have said, that I believe you to be honest.... But an
understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook,
because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred,
and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power
and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.'
"'I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some mistake
about it, For I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon
any constitutional question.'
"'No, Colonel, there's no mistake. Though I live here in the back
woods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from Washington and
read very carefully all the proceedings in Congress. My papers say last
winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some suffers by
fire in Georgetown. Is that true?'
"'Well, my friend, I may as well own up. You have got me there. But
certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours
should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve it's suffering
women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury,
and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I
did.'
"'It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the
principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the
Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has
nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing
money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be intrusted to
man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by tariff,
which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be,
and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What
is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight
centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess
how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are
contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are
even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the
amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much
right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to
one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither
defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give
to anything and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe,
is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very
easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and
corruption and favortism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on
the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity.
Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please,
but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that
purpose.If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in
Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have
thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief.
There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they
had shown their sympathy for the suffers by contributing each one week's
pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of men in and
around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving
themselves of even a luxury of life.. The congressmen chose to keep
their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very
creditable; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for
relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not
yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the
Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is
authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything
beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.
"'So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I
consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the
country, for when Congress once begins to stretch it's power beyond the
limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for
the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make
it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you
see that I cannot vote for you...'
"I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have oppostion, and
this man should go talking, he would set others to talking, and in that
district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, for the fact
is, I was so fully convinced that he was right, I did not want to. But I
must satisfy him, and I said to him:
"Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head, when you said I
had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. I intended to be
guided by it, and thought I had studied it fully, I have heard many
speeches in congress about the powers of the Congress, but what you have
said here at your plow has got more hard, sound sense in it than all
the fine speeches I ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it that
you have, I would have put my head into the fire before I would have
given that vote; and if you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I
ever vote for another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot.'
"He laughingly replied: "Yes Colonel, you have sworn to that once
before, but I will trust you again upon one condition. You say that you
are convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment of it will
do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go around the distict,
you will tell people about this vote, and that you are satisfied it was
wrong, I will not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep
down opposition, and perhaps, I may exert some little influence in that
way.'
"'If I don't,' said I. "I wish I may be shot; and to convince you
that I am in earnest in what I say I will come back this way in a week
or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering of the people, I will
make a speech to them. Get up a barbeque, and I will pay for it.'
"'No Colonel, we are not rich people in this section, but we have
plenty of provisions to contribute for a barbeque, and some to spare for
those who have none.. The push of crops will be over in a few days, and
we can then afford a day for a barbeque. This is Thursday; I will see
to getting up on Saturday week. Come to my house on Friday, and we will
go together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd to see and hear
you.'
"'Well, I will be here. But one thing more before I say good-by. I must know your name.'
"'My name is Bunce.'
"'Not Horatio Bunce?'
"'Yes.'
"'Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before though you say you have
seen me, but I know you very well. I am glad I have met you, and very
proud that I may hope to have you for my friend.'
"It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He
mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for a heart
brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed
themselves not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the
whole country around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the
circle of his immediate acquaintance. Though I had never met him before,
I had heard much of him, and but for this meeting it is very likely I
should have had opposition, and had been beaten. One thing is very
certain, no man could now stand up in that district under such a vote.
"At the appointed time I was at his house, having told our
conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed all
night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest and a
confidence in me stronger than I had ever seen manifested before.
"Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his house, and,
under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to bed, I kept up
until midnight, talking about the principles and affairs of government
and got more real, true knowledge of them than I had got all my life
before.
"I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him --- no,
that is not the word -- I reverence and love him more than any living
man, and I go to see him two or three times a year; and I will tell you
sir, if everyone who professes to be a Christian, lived and acted and
enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by
storm.
"But to return to my story. The next morning we went to the
barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there. I met a
good many whom I had not known before, and they and my friend
introduced me around until I had got pretty well acquainted---at least,
they all knew me.
"In due time notice was given that I would speak to them. They
gathered up around a stand that had been erected. I opened my speech by
saying: "Fellow-citizens --- I present myself before you today feeling
like a new man. My eyes have lately been opened to truths which
ignorance or prejudice, or both, had heretofore hidden from my view. I
feel that I can today offer you the ability to render you more valuable
service than I have ever been able to render before. I am here today
more for the purpose of acknowledging my error than to seek your votes.
That I should make this acknowledgement is due to myself as well as to
you. Whether you will vote for me is a matter for your consideration
only.'
"I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for the
appropriation and then told them why I was satisfied it was wrong. I
closed by saying:
"And now, fellow-citizens, it remains only for me to tell you that
the most of the speech you have listened to with so much interest was
simply a repetition of the arguments by which your neighbor, Mr. Bunce,
convinced me of my error.
"'It is the best speech I ever made in my life, but he is entitled
to the credit for it. And now I hope he is satisfied with his convert
and that he will get up here and tell you so.'
"He came upon the stand and said:
"'Fellow-citizens --- It affords me great pleasure to comply with
the request of Colonel Crockett. I have always considered him a
thoroughly honest man, and I am satisfied that he will faithfully
perform all that he has promised you today.'
"He went down, and there went up from that crowd such a shout for Davy Crockett as his name never called forth before.
"I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a choking then
and felt some big drops rolling down my cheeks. And I tell you now that
the rememberance of those few words spoken by such a man, and the
honest, hearty shout they produced, is worth more to me than all the
reputation I have ever made, or shall ever make, as a member of
Congress.
"Now, sir," conluded Crockett, "you know why I made that speech yesterday.
"There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You
remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House
many verywealthy men-- men who think nothing of spending a week's pay,
or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have
something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful
speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the
deceased -- a debt which could not be paid by money --- and the
insignificant and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a
sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not
one of them reponded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but
trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great
thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice
honor, intergrity, and justice to obtain it."
Davey Crockett on spending Govt money
NOT YOURS TO GIVE
From The Life of Colonel David Crockett, compiled by Edward S. Ellis
(Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884)
David Crockett
Member of Congress 1827-31, 1832-35
One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up
appropriatingmoney for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval
officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in it's support. The
Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:
"Mr. Speaker-- I have as much respect for the memory of the
deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if
suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our
respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead
us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go
into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this
money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We
have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as
we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to
appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have
been made to us upon the ground that it is debt due the deceased. Mr.
Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in
office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the
government was in arrears to him. Every man in this House knows it is
not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate
this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblence of
authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we
have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the
poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give
one week's pay to the object, and if every memeber of Congress will do
the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."
He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its
passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed,
and as, no doubt it would, but for that speech, it received but few
votes, and, of course, was lost.
Later, when asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, Crockett gave this explanation:
"Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the
Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention was
attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a large
fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could. In spite
of all that could be done, many houses were burned and many families
made homeless, and besides, some of them had lost all but the clothes
they had on. The weather was very cold, and when I saw so many women
and children suffering, I felt that something ought to be done for them.
The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their
relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it through as soon
as it could be done.
"The next summer, when it began to be time to think about the
election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of my
district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some time
off, I did not know what might turn up. When riding one day in a part
of my district in which I was more of stranger than any other, I saw a
man in a field plowing and coming toward the road. I gauged my gait so
that we should meet as he came to the fence. As he came up, I spoke to
the man. He replied politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly.
"I began: "Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called candidates, and----'
"Yes, I know you you are Colonel Crockett. I have seen you once before,
and voted for you the last time you were elected. I suppose you are
out electioneering now, but you had better not waste your time or mine. I
shall not vote for you again.'
"This was a sockdolager....I begged him to tell me what was the matter.
"Well, Colonel, it is hardly worth-while to waste time or words upon
it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last winter
which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the
Constitution, or that you are wanting in honesty and firmness to be
guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But I
beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to
avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to speak plainly to a
candidate for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intended by
it only to say that your understanding of the Constitution is very
different from mine; and I will say to you what, but for rudeness, I
should not have said, that I believe you to be honest.... But an
understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook,
because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred,
and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power
and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.'
"'I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some mistake
about it, For I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon
any constitutional question.'
"'No, Colonel, there's no mistake. Though I live here in the back
woods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from Washington and
read very carefully all the proceedings in Congress. My papers say last
winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some suffers by
fire in Georgetown. Is that true?'
"'Well, my friend, I may as well own up. You have got me there. But
certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours
should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve it's suffering
women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury,
and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I
did.'
"'It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the
principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the
Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has
nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing
money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be intrusted to
man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by tariff,
which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be,
and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What
is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight
centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess
how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are
contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are
even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the
amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much
right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to
one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither
defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give
to anything and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe,
is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very
easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and
corruption and favortism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on
the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity.
Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please,
but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that
purpose.If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in
Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have
thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief.
There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they
had shown their sympathy for the suffers by contributing each one week's
pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of men in and
around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving
themselves of even a luxury of life.. The congressmen chose to keep
their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very
creditable; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for
relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not
yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the
Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is
authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything
beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.
"'So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I
consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the
country, for when Congress once begins to stretch it's power beyond the
limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for
the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make
it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you
see that I cannot vote for you...'
"I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have oppostion, and
this man should go talking, he would set others to talking, and in that
district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, for the fact
is, I was so fully convinced that he was right, I did not want to. But I
must satisfy him, and I said to him:
"Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head, when you said I
had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. I intended to be
guided by it, and thought I had studied it fully, I have heard many
speeches in congress about the powers of the Congress, but what you have
said here at your plow has got more hard, sound sense in it than all
the fine speeches I ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it that
you have, I would have put my head into the fire before I would have
given that vote; and if you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I
ever vote for another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot.'
"He laughingly replied: "Yes Colonel, you have sworn to that once
before, but I will trust you again upon one condition. You say that you
are convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment of it will
do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go around the distict,
you will tell people about this vote, and that you are satisfied it was
wrong, I will not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep
down opposition, and perhaps, I may exert some little influence in that
way.'
"'If I don't,' said I. "I wish I may be shot; and to convince you
that I am in earnest in what I say I will come back this way in a week
or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering of the people, I will
make a speech to them. Get up a barbeque, and I will pay for it.'
"'No Colonel, we are not rich people in this section, but we have
plenty of provisions to contribute for a barbeque, and some to spare for
those who have none.. The push of crops will be over in a few days, and
we can then afford a day for a barbeque. This is Thursday; I will see
to getting up on Saturday week. Come to my house on Friday, and we will
go together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd to see and hear
you.'
"'Well, I will be here. But one thing more before I say good-by. I must know your name.'
"'My name is Bunce.'
"'Not Horatio Bunce?'
"'Yes.'
"'Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before though you say you have
seen me, but I know you very well. I am glad I have met you, and very
proud that I may hope to have you for my friend.'
"It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He
mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for a heart
brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed
themselves not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the
whole country around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the
circle of his immediate acquaintance. Though I had never met him before,
I had heard much of him, and but for this meeting it is very likely I
should have had opposition, and had been beaten. One thing is very
certain, no man could now stand up in that district under such a vote.
"At the appointed time I was at his house, having told our
conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed all
night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest and a
confidence in me stronger than I had ever seen manifested before.
"Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his house, and,
under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to bed, I kept up
until midnight, talking about the principles and affairs of government
and got more real, true knowledge of them than I had got all my life
before.
"I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him --- no,
that is not the word -- I reverence and love him more than any living
man, and I go to see him two or three times a year; and I will tell you
sir, if everyone who professes to be a Christian, lived and acted and
enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by
storm.
"But to return to my story. The next morning we went to the
barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there. I met a
good many whom I had not known before, and they and my friend
introduced me around until I had got pretty well acquainted---at least,
they all knew me.
"In due time notice was given that I would speak to them. They
gathered up around a stand that had been erected. I opened my speech by
saying: "Fellow-citizens --- I present myself before you today feeling
like a new man. My eyes have lately been opened to truths which
ignorance or prejudice, or both, had heretofore hidden from my view. I
feel that I can today offer you the ability to render you more valuable
service than I have ever been able to render before. I am here today
more for the purpose of acknowledging my error than to seek your votes.
That I should make this acknowledgement is due to myself as well as to
you. Whether you will vote for me is a matter for your consideration
only.'
"I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for the
appropriation and then told them why I was satisfied it was wrong. I
closed by saying:
"And now, fellow-citizens, it remains only for me to tell you that
the most of the speech you have listened to with so much interest was
simply a repetition of the arguments by which your neighbor, Mr. Bunce,
convinced me of my error.
"'It is the best speech I ever made in my life, but he is entitled
to the credit for it. And now I hope he is satisfied with his convert
and that he will get up here and tell you so.'
"He came upon the stand and said:
"'Fellow-citizens --- It affords me great pleasure to comply with
the request of Colonel Crockett. I have always considered him a
thoroughly honest man, and I am satisfied that he will faithfully
perform all that he has promised you today.'
"He went down, and there went up from that crowd such a shout for Davy Crockett as his name never called forth before.
"I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a choking then
and felt some big drops rolling down my cheeks. And I tell you now that
the rememberance of those few words spoken by such a man, and the
honest, hearty shout they produced, is worth more to me than all the
reputation I have ever made, or shall ever make, as a member of
Congress.
"Now, sir," conluded Crockett, "you know why I made that speech yesterday.
"There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You
remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House
many verywealthy men-- men who think nothing of spending a week's pay,
or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have
something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful
speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the
deceased -- a debt which could not be paid by money --- and the
insignificant and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a
sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not
one of them reponded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but
trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great
thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice
honor, intergrity, and justice to obtain it."
Sunday, June 01, 2014
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