to the great men all around me

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;–

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

A Psalm of Life (excerpt), Henry Longfellow Wadsworth

Best. Wedding Advice. Ever.

We’ve all been to one.  Many of us have been involved in one.  And many more of you have planned, hosted, enjoyed, (survived), and celebrated your own.  As I now stand at the outset of my own engagement, I am like a sponge ready to soak up the collective wedding wisdom that abounds in my community.  Tell us what we need to know!

Post in comments.  Post on our Facebook walls.  Send us emails.  Call us.  Tweet us.  Do whatever you must, just don’t keep your experience, advice, and counsel to yourself!

That’s what she said

We’ll never know the price that was paid by the heroic man who dared to smuggle this information out of the domain of women.  In order to not regard his heroism in vain and because it was sent to me for my benefit, I now pass it on to all the men who can make use of this…

The Real Definition of Words When Used By Women

“Fine”

I am right. This argument is over. You need to shut up.

“That’s Okay”
One of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. “That’s okay” means she wants to think hard and long before deciding when and how you’ll pay for your mistake.

“Nothing”
The calm before the storm. This means “something” and you better be on your toes.  Note: arguments that start with “Nothing” usually end with “Fine” (See #1).

“Five Minutes”
If getting dressed, this means half an hour. (Don’t be mad about this. It’s the same definition for you when it’s your turn to do some chores around the house.

“Thanks”
A woman is thanking you. Do not question this or faint.  Just say, “You’re welcome,” and let it go.

Loud Sigh
Not actually a word but rather a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. It means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is standing here wasting her time arguing with you about “Nothing.” (See #3)

“Go Ahead”
This is a dare, not permission. (don’t do it!)

“Don’t worry about it, I got it”
The second most dangerous statement a woman can make. It means that a woman has asked a man several times to do something and is now doing it herself. (This will result in you asking at a later date, “What’s wrong?” For the woman’s response, see #3.)

Biting Lower Lip
I’m going to need some help with this one.  It happened to me the other night and I still have no idea what I did wrong…

grasped all that justice means

An ordinary boy, a weak son, would have submitted, have felt ashamed of his father, sir, but he stood up for his father against them all.  For his father and for truth and for justice.  For what he suffered when he kissed your brother’s hand and cried to him ‘forgive father, forgive him,’– that only God knows– and I, his father.  For our children– not your children, but ours– the children of the poor gentlemen looked down upon by everyone– know what justice means, sir, even at nine years old.  How should the rich know?  They don’t explore such depths once in their lives.  But at that moment in the square when he kissed his hand, at that moment my Ilusha had grasped all that justice means.

The captain to Alyosha, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Deus Meus Et Omnia

That is as if he said, ‘You shall have as true an interest in all my attributes for your good, as they are mine for my own glory…

My grace, saith God, shall be yours to pardon you, and my power shall be yours to protect you, and my wisdom shall be yours to direct you, and my goodness shall be yours to relive you, and my mercy shall be yours to supply you, and my glory shall be yours to crown you.  This is a comprehensive promise, for God to be our God: it includes all.

Deus meus et omnia [God is mine, and everything is mine], said Luther.

Brooks, a Puritan. Works Y, 308

the real economic stimulus

Micro Entreprenuer in the Dominican Republic

Entrepreneurship is not about getting one over on the customer.  It’s not about working on your own.  It’s not about looking out for number one.  It’s not necessarily about making a lot of money.  It is absolutely not about letting work take over your life.  On the contrary, it’s about turning what excites you in life into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.

Richard Branson

I Do Not Choose to Be a Common Man, by Dean Alfange

Sedona in September

It is my right to be uncommon—if I can.

I seek opportunity—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.

I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.

I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia.

I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat.

It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, “This I have done.”

By Dean Alfange
______________

*Originally published in This Week Magazine.
Later printed in The Reader’s Digest, October 1952 and January 1954.

The Honorable Dean Alfange was an American statesman born December 2, 1899, in Constantinople (now Istanbul). He was raised in upstate New York. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I and attended Hamilton College, graduating in the class of 1922.

Found at www.daveramsey.com on Sunday, October 26, 2008.

Jesus is a Friend of Mine

I hate you Sarah Palin

As we approach the final bend in what has become one of the longest and most compelling US presidential campaigns in history, there is certainly no lack of political satire volleying between red blogs and blue.  Enjoy below one of the more witty reads I’ve found this week…

Original HERE at National Review.

David Kahane is the nom de cyber of a peaceful and tolerant liberal writer in Hollywood who loves his fellow men, and women, unless they’re closet conservatives or Jon Voigt or David Zucker or Kelsey Grammer or Robert Downey, Jr., or Angelina Jolie, or Bruce Willis or Jay Leno or Pat Boone or Orson Bean or a bunch of other people you used to like. You can cheer him on or tell him how much you hate him at kahanenro@gmail.com.

A couple of months ago, you couldn’t drive anywhere in Los Angeles without seeing giant billboards that proclaimed, “I hate you, Sarah Marshall.” Well, we’ve all since long forgotten Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Judd Apatow’s not-quite-$100-million-comedy, about a nebbish whose hot girlfriend leaves him for a drug-addled rocker and they wind up at the same resort in, of all places, Hawaii, and hilarity ensues. Or, Hawai’i as we now call it, orthographically speaking.  But ever since that wrinkly old white dude with the numberless residences, John “the Senator from the Canal Zone” McCain, rained on Barack Hussein Obama II Barry Soetero Barack Hussein Obama Jr., a.k.a. the “Senator from Hinky Dink Kenna,” aka the Punahou Kid’s, parade with his insane, opportunistic, clueless, out-of-touch and breathtakingly audacious, game-changing pick of Sarah Marshall Palin to be his vice president, there’s another Sarah in town to hate.

Yeah, I’m talking about Sarah Barracuda, aka Hurricane Sarah. Where does she get off thinking she can be vice president of the United States? Up against the one million years in the Senate her opponent, Joe Biden, has logged in between expensive rides at taxpayer expense on the Acela, what can she offer? Mayor of a town of six people and ten caribou [sneer]? Miss Congeniality [sneer, sneer]? Illegitimate-child baby-grandma [sneer, sneer, sneer]? Poster chick for “family values” [sneer, sneer, sneer, sneer]?

Sorry, I’m running out of sneers.

But, seriously, just look at the negatives: she’s a popular first-term governor, she’s a woman, she’s happily married, she has five kids, one of them with Down’s syndrome, she’s a maverick, she’s from way beyond the Beltway, she’s taken on both the Republican Party and Big Oil, she shoots automatic weapons, she can kill a moose with a butter knife and fillet a sea lion with a smile, her husband’s a roustabout Eskimo snowmobile champ, she’s a hockey mom, she was Miss Wasilla, she looks like she should be playing Cecily, the saucy librarian, in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, and she doesn’t wear pantsuits. Heck, she hasn’t even appeared yet on Meet the Press! I mean, who in his right mind would vote for her?

Sure, if she were one of ours, not only would we have nominated her by acclamation, since she fulfills every trope of feminism except for her unfortunate and inexplicable opposition to murdering unborn children, we would also have made at least two TV movies about her life, celebrating her choice to have her fifth child and the announcement yesterday that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant and is going to marry the teenage father of her child. That’s the kind of heartwarming, inclusive, empowering story we love — she’s like Juno come to life as Juneau, set in Mystery, Alaska.

But she’s not a Democrat, which despite her va-va-va-voom appearance, means she’s not really a woman, which is one of the reasons we’ve spent the past four days since McCain unveiled her trying to tear her limb from limb. Just because she’s the governor of a state sandwiched between two obscure and unimportant countries, Canada and Russia, and spent more time in her first five minutes visiting American troops in Iraq than Evita Barry did during his entire Rainbow Tour, what could she possibly know about foreign policy? It’s not like she’s John Edwards or something.

So that’s why we’re having our Wellstone Funeral Moment at the moment. We mean well; we promised ourselves we wouldn’t go over the top with our outright loathing of the Neanderthals who preach “Christian” values while practicing Wiccanism and child sacrifice and who hate black people and gay people and want to destroy the environment just because they can, and want to amass more money than even John Kerry or Jon Corzine or Herb Kohl or Jay Rockefeller or Dianne Feinstein — the five richest senators — or Ted Kennedy or John Edwards or Nancy Pelosi have. That, usually, is the Kos Kidz’s job. Along with speculating exactly how Bush got from My Pet Goat to planting the depth charges that blew up the levees in New Orleans.

But sometimes the mask slips and you can see — whoops! — how much we hate you. Normally we’re against hate in all its forms, and embrace tolerance as one of our defining moral attributes. But when it comes to you conservatives, well, with the best will in the world, we just can’t tolerate you. You’re elitist, you’re judgmental, you’re hypocritical, and we know that deep down you hate us even more than we hate you. Therefore, by any means necessary, we will defeat you this fall. Voter fraud, “walking around” money, legions of lawyers, as many recounts as it takes — bring it on!

Because we need to take back our country. We need to take it back from fascists like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and give it back to its rightful proprietors, patriots like Henry Wallace, Sidney Hillman, Norman Thomas, Gus Hall, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Saul Alinsky, William Kunstler, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, and, yes, my guy, the Talking Parrot, you know who.

And Sarah Marshall Palin stands in the way of all that. After we sent Bill n’ Hill packing with their twin gold watches in Denver, we thought we had a clear playing field. The sunshine of the uplands was ours. Mother Gaia had opened wide her arms to embrace us, shunning the Orcs and the Uruk-hai of the Anti-Slavery, Anti-Segregation, Anti-Secularism, Anti-Sedition and Anti-Surrender Party. We were going up against Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, Herbert Hoover and Whoever, Daddy Bush and Dan Quayle, Gerald R. Ford and, well, Bob Dole.

Piece of cake, walk on the beach, a Renaissance Weekend in a non-denominational heaven for atheists. Until Sarah Marshall Palin showed up, bringing with her 10 million bucks for the bad guys in three days, a level of enthusiasm not seen since Ronnie was a pup, and a clear shot to Republican dominance with her and Bobby Jindal and whatever seduced and corrupted minority group is coming next for eons to come.

So that’s why we hate you, Sarah Marshall Palin. We hate you because you remind the other side of their wives, their girlfriends, their daughters, and make them want to fight for you against our sneers and our smears. We hate you because you’re smart and accomplished and didn’t make your bones on the back of Monica Lewinsky. We hate you because you’ve made us forget that our last two candidates for vice president were Joe Lieberman and John Edwards, whoever they were.

We hate you because you’re smart and beautiful and we wish we had women like you on our side.

We hate you.

Obama ventured forth to bring light to the world

Political satire at its finest!  Please enjoy Gerard Baker’s latest commentary on the recent Obama global tour…  original is HERE.

Jae C. Hong / Associated Press

The anointed one’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action – and a blessing to all his faithful followers

By Gerard Baker

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness. The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth – for the first time – to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child’s very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child’s wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child’s journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.

Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.

And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.

Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.

But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.

And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.

Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.

On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.

And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”