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Manly Men Doing Manly Things

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to AoSHQ's prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread.

More Manly Poets

This is a topic I've touched on before, but it's always worth a revisit. Moron commenter 'Taro Tsujimoto' enjoys reading manly poetry written by manly men, poems with, as he says, "big brass huevos", and submitted a few of his favorites.

Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen (one of my personal favorites) is probably one of the most beautiful anti-war poems you'll ever read, and by "beautiful" I mean "intensely horrific". It's a description of a poison gas attack on a small group of soldiers, and one of them doesn't get his mask on in time. You should really read it out loud to get the feel and rhythm of the words.

According to Owen's bio at poets.org, he was wounded in battle in 1917. But

Owen rejoined his regiment in Scarborough, June 1918, and in August returned to France. He was awarded the Military Cross for bravery at Amiens. He was killed on November 4 of that year while attempting to lead his men across the Sambre canal at Ors. He was 25 years old. The news reached his parents on November 11, the day of the Armistice.

Dude hated the war, yet tried to do his duty in combat even though it cost him his life. You can't get much more manly than that.

WWI was a good war to be "anti-" about.

And some poems really do need to be read aloud to get the full effect. For example, Free Fall by Greg Ferguson is a modern retelling of man's temptation and fall from grace based on Genesis 3. But listening to this dramatic reading in the short film video at this link is, in my opinion, a lot better than just reading the text.

WWI (or the aftermath) was also the inspiration for The Second Coming, by W. B. Yeats, written in 1919. This is the poem that contains that famous line "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" which comes to mind in this age's political and cultural battles every time one on our side betrays us, chickens out, or sells us down the river. Which, as we all know, occurs with depressing regularity.

But it's a thoroughly creepy poem, and it helps to read it in a dimly-lit room with bad weather going on outside.

I remember Simon and Garfunkle's musical version of Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem Richard Cory from their Sounds of Silence album. The whole poem is nothing but a set-up for the last line, which Taro call "the greatest sucker punch in literature." He also says he would love to hear suggestion from other morons on "manly-man kickass poems."

I have a couple of manly poem candidates: Ice Handler by Carl Sandburg (flannel shirts and fisticuffs), and High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. Magee, the son of far east missionaries, enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940. He was killed in a training flight accident at age 19.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:00 AM | Comments (193)
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So speculates Meghan McArdle.

Venezuela's cities are convulsed with riots. A local beauty queen was shot in the head during protests over . . . well, everything: chronic shortages of basic goods, increasing repression of free speech by a government that clearly feels it cannot tolerate any dissent. She is not the only person to have been killed in recent days. The government is cracking down -- hard -- on any and all opposition.

...

As the economy has deteriorated, the government has resorted to dubious stopgaps such as price controls. The price controls have produced more shortages, leading to more stopgaps . . . and more political repression to control complaints about the shortages and stopgaps. People made much of the fact that Chavez won elections -- but less of the fact that he won them in the context of government policies that required television stations to broadcast hours of his speeches every week. And that he silenced stations that opposed him.

She notes that the people, no longer having any means of legal dissent with the government, are now resorting to the illegal ones.

More: According to Ronald Radosh, the Nation is too busy defending Putin's attack on Ukraine to address Venezuela at all.

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I've been hashing this out in emails with friends. I have a good theory, I think, but I think TV's Andy Levy found undeniably great evidence, which he shared on Twitter.

I don't know if you can figure out everything from his clue, but I think you'll agree that the below is Definitely Something.

If you don't want anything spoiled, don't read any of the below post. Andy's clue is too good to not be a genuine clue, and I think my theory is right too. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (288)
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Ragnarok is upon us. Another The End Is Here fail.

Keith Koffler goes country to country in search of one, single foreign policy success for Obama and finds nothing but fail. I'm sure we'll get another pivot or two that will finally work. Maybe. Ugh. It's gonna be a long three years. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:54 PM | Comments (589)
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Happy Saturday y'all.

Today we bring to you updated news of the situation in Chattanooga, some of the best in automotive advertising, one hell of a yard sale, what might be the most asinine tech "advancement" ever, and Countrysquire introduces a new weekly series: The Beauty of the Week.

As expected, the UAW has called on the NLRB to cast aside the vote at VW and order a new vote be held. In the process, they have succeeded in doing something I would never have thought possible: Making me cheer for Senator Bob Corker.

The UAW complaint alleged that comments by top Tennessee Republicans went beyond simple criticism and amounted to "extraordinary interference" in the election. The elected officials had warned that, if unionized, the factory would run the risk of losing legislative support for state financial incentives.

The union also claimed that comments by Corker were "intended to coerce employees to vote against UAW." Corker had issued a press release last week claiming that, based on private conversations he had had with VW officials, the company would expand the plant to include a new SUV line if workers did not unionize.

That ran contrary to prior indications from VW officials, who denied having had such conversations with Corker. The senator stood by his comments.

Corker said the UAW complaint showed that the union was interested only "in its own survival" and nothing else: "The workers at Chattanooga's Volkswagen plant spoke very clearly last week, so we are disappointed the UAW is ignoring their decision and has filed this objection."

Keep in mind that they failed to win the vote despite the heavy hand of the German union and the implicit support of the management at VW.

Irony. Look it up.

In its filing, the UAW stated that the Republicans "conducted what appears to have been a coordinated and widely-publicized coercive campaign, in concert with their staffs and others, to deprive (Volkswagen) workers of their federally-protected right, through the Election, to support and select the UAW as their exclusive representative."

"We're committed to standing with the Volkswagen workers to ensure that their right to have a fair vote without coercion and interference is protected," said UAW President Bob King.

Of course, the UAW took to twitter to retweet the rantings of their supporters.

I suppose "the working man" doesn't include the 700+ employees who voted against unionization.

If they, the UAW and the NLRB, succeed in overturning this vote you can guarandamntee that this will be just the start of union rape and pillaging.

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And Open Thread

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President Yanukovych has fled the capitol city of Kiev and is reportedly near the border with Russia.

And Open Thread.

[addendum] Yanukovych now claims that this is a coup and that he will not step down.

Japan Times:

“I am not leaving the country for anywhere. I do not intend to resign. I am the legitimately elected president,” Yanukovych told a local television station in the eastern city of Kharkiv.

And the pro-government faction pushes back

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:24 AM | Comments (274)
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Late yesterday we learned that the San Diego sheriff won't seek an en banc review of the Peruta right to carry case by the Ninth Circuit. As is pointed out at the link, there's a similar, and conflicting, case out of the Third Circuit for which certiorari has already been petitioned at the Supreme Court. They're almost guaranteed to take the case to resolve this circuit split.

Obama calls retreat

Kiev is ablaze. Syria is a killing field. The Iranian mullahs arenÂ’t giving up their nuclear weapons capability, and other regimes in the Middle East are preparing to acquire their own. Al Qaeda is making gains and is probably stronger than ever. China and Russia throw their weight around, while our allies shudder and squabble.

Why is this happening? Because the United States is in retreat. What is the Obama administrationÂ’s response to these events? Further retreat.

GM is alive, Bin Laden is dead, and our Secretary of State is fighting ... "climate change". We're in the best of hands, folks. The best.

Great headline, or greatest headline ever?: Lesbian animal charity boss in tragic love triangle paid £180,000 to gag at least six senior members of staff

Posted by: andy at 03:29 AM | Comments (171)
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Aurora Borealis over Maine, Feb 19; pic by Mike Taylor

Manchin claims he will vote tomorrow to repeal Obamacare, but still wants to "fix" it.

Both parties agree on many aspects of the ACA, such as pre-existing conditions not being excluded from coverage and no lifetime caps, but there are still many kinks that need to be fixed, Manchin said.

“I will vote tomorrow to repeal (the ACA), but I want to fix the problems in it.”

He said the ACA is essentially a product and the government needs to find a way to “sell it” and make their customers want to buy it.

As previously reported, the FCC is dropping its lawless plan to monitor how media companies decide to report the news. But at the same time they announce another push for more control over the media.

The Federal Communications Commission has pulled the plug on its plan to conduct an intrusive probe of newsrooms as part of a “Critical Information Needs” survey of local media markets.

However, a revised version of the survey could raise new concerns: that it will trade its now-kiboshed news questions for a demographic survey that might justify new race-based media ownership rulemaking.

“[I]n the course of FCC review and public comment, concerns were raised that some of the questions may not have been appropriate,” the FCC announced in a statement Friday...

The Critical Information Needs (CIN) survey has been a slow-burning controversy since ever since this reporter first revealed its existence in October 2013.

First Amendment supporters objected that the design of the survey would have had FCC representatives interrogating newsroom staffers about how they make coverage decisions and select (or spike) story ideas. Many commentators objected to the potential intimidation involved in such a survey.

The original plan of the survey would also have taken the FCC out of its traditional purview of regulating supposedly scarce airwaves. Because the CIN sought to discover “underserved” consumers in a variety of “media ecologies,” the survey would have included not only broadcast media but newspapers, blogs and online news.

Joel Kotkin frets that we live in an age of "downward mobility," in which the middle class is becoming increasingly proletarian. Which is bad if true, because while the middle class will tend to vote Republican, the proletarian class will tend to vote socialist.

The judge rips the government for "slow-rolling" important information -- refusing to disclose it -- in the Sherrod-Breitbart case. If the government refuses to turn over information critical to Breitbart and Larry O'Connor, then they should accept the cost of whatever judgment Sherrod might win.

Watch the AP spin Obama's unilateral assumption of all legislative and executive power as something laudable:

For Obama, a new sense of purpose in acting alone

JULIE PACE

WASHINGTON (AP) - This week, President Barack Obama promoted tougher fuel efficiency standards for trucks. He touted progress on initiatives to strengthen the U.S. patent system. And he signed an executive order intended to speed up the process for approving import or export cargo.

Welcome to Obama's self-proclaimed "year of action," where hardly a day goes by without the president and his top advisers trumpeting policy initiatives the White House is undertaking without the help of Congress.

Seems like Julia Pace misspelled "legal, constitutional authorization" as "help."

In Ventura County, California, a retired sheriff is collecting $227,000 per year as pension. He actually collets more than that ($276,000), but he says even that's not enough: He's suing for $75,000 more. But the public is finally starting to resist.

Thanks to Just the Tip, @rdbrewer4, @conartcritic, @slublog, and the rest of the Morons.

I'm knocking off early. Have a great weekend!

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