I Read...

That's what I read.


--

Goodbye, Private Hudson!

Privates Vasquez and Hudson

We miss you, Hudson.

("I'm Hicks. He's Hudson!")

--

Weather?

 "How Cold Was It?"

Ian Holm   The Day After Tomorrow

It was warm while we were in D.C., but that is to be expected, I guess. Some plants were beginning to come up, trees were budding. The locals said that that was pretty much standard for the area; not much chance of cold snap or killing frost...
And this was said in the neighborhood of February 18th.

Just a year ago in D.C. there was 36 inches of snow in the last week of January and a cold little ice-thing trans-ing into rain on the morning of the 15th of February, which was a birthday we all remember well at Holy Cross, Germantown. I took a photo of the car with the mother-to-be pulling away, heading to Germantown, and there were little vermilion jewels of moisture made by the car's rear lights on the camera lens, caught forever in the photo.

And when we came home this year it was moderately moderate; it turned cold 1, maybe 2 nights; the weather forecasters promised a storm of sufficient proportions to merit a name - I think it was Winter Storm Ozzie - but everything petered out.
We got rain, but not too much.

And I don't like naming winter storms. For some reason, a winter storm with a name makes it impossible for me to keep track of what's going on. I mean, they name hurricanes and monsoons, and often there are like 1 or 1-and-a-half hurricanes blowing or 1, 2, 3 maybe hurricane wanna-bes: a tropical storm, a major depression in the Atlantic, and some sort of witches brew in the Pacific... but there is usually only one big winter storm at a time on the continental USA, isn't there?

I remember during the polar vortex of 4 years ago when the temperature went to -30 F one night, I did not have to wonder which polar vortex was causing that plunge.

Anyway, I'm glad Trump is undermining climate change science 'cuz the Warms (or Shirts) has beat the Colds (or Skins) in the meterological pick-up game, and what really is the point: Lucifer always has the ace up his sleeve. It is in the 40s again today and it won't apparently turn cold again until I put away the winter clothes and bring out the spring outfits.

In Scotland and Northern Europe there seems to be an cold, odd sequel to The Day After Tomorrow and I expect another Ian Holm to freeze in another laboratory on another Grampian mountain range...

Grampian Mountains

Th' uncommon Winter bids fair
our subniveal discontents lay bare.

--

Take Shelter From Irony

I saw the film Take Shelter again, making it 5 times now.

It is Fatal Irony... that's why I like it. We are living in the Age of Fatal Irony ("fatal" in the sense of "fate", not necessarily a mortality...).

I consider the Trump administration to be one of the first clear and unmistakable steps of our descent into the maelstrom, and it confirmed my belief in the ironic and fatal (now in the sense of "mortally wounding") twists that we have begun.

The end of Take Shelter is possibly the most terrifying and scary sudden ironic turning that I have ever seen.

--

No Country For Old Men: Trump Says "Nobody Knew The Trouble I'd See..."

"It's a mess, ain't it, Sheriff?"

"If it ain't, it'll do 'til the real mess gets here."



*****

Trump: ‘Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated’
Monday 27 February 2017 13.15 EST
Last modified on Monday 27 February 2017 13.40 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/27/donald-trump-replacing-obamacare-complicated

Donald Trump told a room full of state governors on Monday that “nobody knew” replacing the massive Affordable Care Act, which expanded health coverage to 20 million Americans, would prove to be so “complicated”.
Donald Trump's first budget: enormous defense spending as most agencies cut
Read more

Trump reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to repealing and replacing the ACA, better known as Obamacare, and took a jab at new polls that show that its popularity is rising.

Uncertainty about how Republicans will replace the ACA has unnerved health insurers, hospitals, community clinics, doctors, constituents and even Republican governors.

“We have come up with a solution that’s really, really, I think, very good,” Trump said. “It’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.”...

Nobody knew. It took all of us by surprise. We are such dimwits that only get their info from FOX. We are such poltroons that we all deserve impeachment.

--

I Read...

That's what I read.

--

I Read...

That's one of the things I read.

(click on Title Logo to visit)
--

I Read...

That's what I read.

(click on Title Logo to visit)

--

The Opera Mar-a-Lago: Aria del Buffone: Misterioso

On February 20 in The Washington Post

...According to a New York Times report, there won’t be a plan from the Trump administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price told House leaders last week that “the administration would let the House draft the replacement bill.” That should be a flashing red light to Republicans. It seems Trump was — shocker! — lying when he previously said in an interview with The Post the White House had drafted a plan that was nearly done. Moreover, by refusing to put his own position in writing, Trump directs criticism of an Obamacare replacement to House Republicans and preserves his option to reject the plan and attack his own party for coming up with an insufficient plan...

That sounds familiar. I think we mused on its possibility before.

As of yesterday, February 23, we have reports that the White House will have their own plan or outline of a plan or outline of a draft of an idea of a plan sometime by early to mid-March. Apparently the Republican party outside of the Trump cabal were not going to let Il Pagliaccio just sit out the Super Bowl of Health Care.

--

Birthday #1

I have been celebrating the first birthday of my granddaughter. We left on February 13 and are returning now.

It is February, which is often a severe winter month, but now the winters of our discontents are made glorious summer by this sun:

The temperature will hit 70 degrees F today, and we are hoping the cherry and other crops will not be destroyed as they were 6 or so years ago by a week of 80 degrees in March.

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Milo Self-Destructs

Milo Yiannopoulos has resigned from his job at Breitbart News.

Milo Yiannopoulos resigns from Breitbart News
By Kelsey Sutton, Hadas Gold and Peter Sterne
02/21/17 03:12 PM EST
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2017/02/milo-yiannopoulos-leaves-breitbart-news-235237

Embattled conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos announced on Tuesday that he would resign from Breitbart News, where he was a senior editor.

"I would be wrong to allow my poor choice of words to detract from my colleagues' important reporting, so today I am resigning from Breitbart, effective immediately," Yiannopoulos said in a press release. "This decision is mine alone."

Yiannopoulos addressed his resignation at a press conference in lower Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, arguing that while he believes the tapes that led to his resignation were deceptively edited, he was "certainly guilty of imprecise language."

"To repeat: I do not support child abuse," Yiannopoulos said at the press conference. "I am sorry to other abuse victims who may have interpreted my statements as flippant."
170220-milo-yiannopoulos-getty-1160.jpg

His book, "Dangerous," which was to be published by Simon & Schuster before the company dropped the Breitbart editor on Monday, will be released independently later in 2017, with 10 percent of proceeds to a child abuse charity, he said.

Outside of the meeting space where the presser is being held, a small group of protesters held signs and chanted, while inside, a dozens of reporters from outlets like Reuters and Fox News set up camera crews to capture the action.

Yiannopoulos' comments created tension within Breitbart, with some staffers uncomfortable with how slowly Breitbart leadership was to respond to the controversy surrounding their employee and how little they communicated with staff throughout the weekend. Some threatened to leave if Yiannopoulos stayed...

I have read accounts of the Yiannopoulos' remarks that caused the uproar, and Mr. Yiannopoulos seems to be referring to Ancient Greece and paiderasteia, not to pedophilia. I am guessing at this. I really have no insight into his mind.

We may read about paiderastia - or pederasty, as commonly termed - in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_love

...The most common male-male relationship was paiderasteia, a socially-acknowledged institution in which a mature male (erastēs, the active lover) bonded with or mentored a teen-aged youth[11]:115 (eromenos, the passive lover, or pais, "boy" understood as an endearment and not necessarily a category of age [10]:16[12]). Martin Litchfield West views Greek pederasty as "a substitute for heterosexual love, free contacts between the sexes being restricted by society."[13]...

So Mr. Yiannopoulos probably was referring to this institution, which is known to anyone who has read Plato at least; it is more of an older mentor-younger adolescent relationship which was ritualized. (I believe the erastēs presented the object of his affection with a rooster, which, if accepted, sort of cemented the bonds of amity.)

However, having seen this and understood this, I do not see how substituting pederasty for pedophilia is going to save Mr. Yiannopoulos' bacon.

I have read some defenses, and even though he may have been flippant, brash, a provocateur, and annoying, he most obviously was talking about pederasty - at a minimum - and there is not much of a way around that. I don't think many conservative evangelicals would endorse that bit of causuistry.

We may not be surprised that many of the defenses being mounted for Mr. Yiannopoulos take on the nonsensical tone of political arguments and thereby take a course which makes them completely miss what is going on: the phenomenon of certain parts of Mr. Yiannopoulos' personal history are revealed to us - with implications for others with similar histories - but these defenders choose to ignore the obvious and take refuge in the cave of their own ignorance.


Breitbart editor-in-chief calls Yiannopoulos comments 'indefensible,' but mounts a defense
By Hadas Gold
02/21/17 11:45 AM EST
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2017/02/breitbart-editor-in-chief-calls-yiannopoulos-comments-indefensible-but-says-theres-context-235226

Breitbart’s editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow, called Milo Yiannopoulos' comments about pedophilia “indefensible,” “troubling” and “upsetting” on the company’s daily radio show Tuesday morning. But Marlow also defended the Breitbart senior editor, columnist and overall provocateur as a victim of a coordinated attack whose “appalling” words needed to be understood in the context of Yiannopoulos’ personal history.
"It was something that was a total surprise to people in the Breitbart organization that there is video that surfaced that appeared to show him justifying sex between an adult and a minor, at least in certain circumstances which was very troubling and upsetting,” Marlow said on the radio show. "He seemed to be speaking from personal experience as a gay man; he also revealed he’s a victim of child abuse himself. He himself told me he’s never had inappropriate contact with a minor since he was an adult. … it’s all very upsetting and something we take very seriously at Breitbart. We’ve been going through things and trying to figure out the best way to handle this, but the bottom line is the comments on the video are not defensible, and I think most people [agree] with that.”

It’s not clear what Yiannopoulos' future with Breitbart will look like. While Marlow condemned Yiannopoulos' comments about pedophilia, he said the left has done much worse...


... While Marlow called out Yiannopoulos' comments as “troubling,” he emphasized the “context’ In which the comments were made, including Yiannopoulos' own history and that Yiannopoulos’ comments were “merely words” compared to what those on “the left” have done, mentioning people like actress Lena Dunham and filmmaker Roman Polanski.

"We have many examples on the left who have admitted to statutory rape; Lena Dunham had in her book touching her sister’s private parts as a child; you have Roman Polanski; you have millions of examples of the left of normalizing behavior, similar to what Milo described,” Marlow said. "There’s no evidence Milo has been a predator, and so I do think that is also very important context.”

Marlow also suggested the video reemerging was part of a “coordinated hit.” The video, filmed in the summer of 2016, was resurfaced over the weekend by the blog and Twitter account “The Reagan Battalion.” ...

 This is a very poor defense combining the pornographic with the irrelevant and leading us to believe that Breitbart as a whole seems to have something wrong with their heads... if not other parts. Whether it was part of a coordinated hit or not is totally immaterial to the endorsement of pederasty.

The illogical reference to a book written by the actress, Lena Dunham, who is not a political and social provocateur, a description of The Divine Mr. Y 

The Divine Miss M, for example

that Breitbart and Mr. Yiannopoulos are fond of using to describe Mr. Y, points to the fact that the people here involved are totally missing the most important facet of this phenomenon, which is Mr. Yiannopoulos' self destruction.

Why did he do it?
Did he not know that conservatives were unlikely (1) to be able to distinguish pedophilia from pederasty, or (2) to be able to countenance pederasty itself?
I believe that strictly speaking, Jerry Sandusky was guilty of pederasty, and that man is in jail.
So what did Mr. Y expect?

I have more to say on this and will so soon.



--

continued at:
second    http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2017/03/milo-self-destructs-2.html
third       http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2017/03/milo-self-destructs-3rd-part-of-3.html

Continuous Transportation: Segregated Transport

Un État de Transport Continu
inspiré par le film Transperceneige

2011
Gender segregated bus in orthodox area of Jerusalem with young woman making protest.

--

Places of Mankind: Worship Сампсониевский Cобор

Sampsonyevsky Cathedral in St. Petersburg
(Saint Sampson's)

--
pix: Regnum.ru

Continuous Transportation: Egypt Trains

Un État de Transport Continu
inspiré par le film Transperceneige

Egyptian Railroad poster


--

https://www.flickr.com/photos/124446949@N06/16017366429/in/album-72157652009387134/

Continuous Transportation: Segregated Transport

Un État de Transport Continu
inspiré par le film Transperceneige

Segregated bus
USA

maybe.... 60 years ago?

--

Пряники

Пряники 
Pryaniki: Russian gingerbread or spice cookies.
Mix the sugar, eggs, soda, cinnamon, honey...
cardamom, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, anise...

The Cat and the Fox;   Kronotsky Nature Reserve, Kamchatka is one of Russia's oldest wildlife reserves, founded under Stalin in 1934.

--

Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven

 Sarah and Maybelle Carter Singing "Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven."

We wrote a post on Mr. Bannon a couple of days ago   (http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-grey-mech-cometh.html) based on an article in The Huffington Post titled  Steve Bannon's obsession with a dark theory of history should be worrisome

We only wish to point out the perils of prophecy and believing that one may know the future with certainty.

Point 1.
That is why we have elections, like the most recent one. If outcomes were deterministic, elections are mere window-dressing.


Point 2
We cannot talk with God.
Oh, we know we always pray and say we are talking to God, but we also say that God is "ineffable", meaning we can't talk about God, for he is so beyond our understanding.

However, when we say we cannot talk about something, we also imply that we cannot talk to that something, for if we could talk to God, then we could grasp at least those human linguistics phenomena which God must use, and then we could have some understanding of divinity in an intimate form.

Now if you say that God is not ineffable and the argument above is nonsense, fine. But that also means that God can be talked about like the Super Bowl and mustard on pretzels.
A lot of us do just that.

I do not talk to God. When I do that old-timey prayer thing, I am talking to myself and my Icon or Image of God, but I have not in any sense used a holy telephone and said, "Hello, Central, give me heaven."
Prayer now is different.

The realization that one cannot talk to God is devastating and unsettling.
It is a vast opening within our existence.
That is why if we really understand the inability to talk to God, we should have something ready as a lifeline... else we are left in a sea of despair ("despair" since we have lived our entire lives thinking we can palaver with God, and that removal of that underpinning shatters the structure of the ego).


What happens after this realization is surprising and the topic of some later article.


Now, we see Mr. Bannon thinking he can speak to God, or he can channel History, or practice some other arcane science.
Mr. Bannon, like so many of us, has drained the world of the color of God, and left us with black-and-white. Like Marx, he has kicked God off the throne and has enthroned an ideology. Nothing is in the hands of God - for we cannot speak to God, so it may as well be as if God does not exist!!!! - and the world is derelict of divinity... the world is populated by the walking dead, who do not yet know they are dead.
Others of us have enthroned our own nation, making American Exceptionalism our golden calf, or have dreamed up Imperiums based upon ourselves and allies and canons of the past which we hardly half understand.... all to try and fill back in the blanks we have left in our worlding.

After draining away the colors of the world, many people try to "colorize" what is left with their theories of the future.

The roads to the future are too many and the progress too uncertain to be able to predict.
Mr. Bannon is merely seeing patterns in falling sands and anticipating the edges of chaos.

As a child I saw facial patterns in the wood of the furniture and doors of my parents' house. After having discerned the pattern, I saw the same faces every day in the grain and knots.
That did not make those patterns real faces.

There is no short, sweet, and easy road to prophecy. Ask Cassandra. Ask the prophet in his own hometown.


*****

As I recall the words:

"Hello, Central, give me heaven,
for my mother's there;
you will find her with Saint Peter
on the Golden Stair..."

--

Politically Correct

I have often been called a hypocrite. It comes with the territory.

I remember 9 years ago when I did this post:

Dunking Doughnuts [ better known as "Dunkin' (sic) Donuts (sic) ] has pulled an advertisement of Rachel Ray hawking java.

Apparently eagle-eyed Michelle Malkin spotted the scarf as being a kaffiya, it reminded her of Yassir Arafat, and she went ballistic. Something about terrorist chic...  I grabbed my cell phone to call a friend and let them know the news from the Advertising Front of the War on Terror...but only got as far as punching in the exchange when it dawned on me that I was using "Arabic" numerals!!

[...]

An acquaintance tried to defend Ms. Malkin. That was a bit much. It was 2008's version of trying to defend K. Con's (Kellyanne Conway's) public advertisment from the White House to buy Ivanka Trump's clothing: indefensible.

But what I did was worse.

Since She-who-must-be-obeyed was present I could not be my natural obnoxious self, so I turned to her, winked, and said "Fitti Fitti !!" in Yoruba.

We laughed and the acquaintance stood there uncomprehending... and probably still is.

--

Continuous Transportation: Russian Trains

Un État de Transport Continu
inspiré par le film Transperceneige

Narrow gauge locomotive at the Pereslavl Railway Museum

--
http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/russia11.htm

The Grey Mech Cometh

This morning I woke about 4:30, got up made coffee, thought of somethings I had to do, then sat down to watch the rest of Terminator: Genysis. I do not quite understand the continuous softening of Sarah Connor in the series of movies, but it was OK.

I mean, the whole time-travel-paradox thing with an evil John Connor lost me at the first turn in the time maze and I really did not understand a word of the patter the characters spoke about "future so-and-so" and "in the past so-and-so"... so much was my befuddlement that Skynet himself became more like a pantomime horse in the sky...

zipping through various incarnations, or immetallations, or implasmations of newer and more advanced terminator entities.
So I did not seek to understand.

Furthermmore, there was a sub-plot of Sarah and John's father-to-be and romance, but any romance was always preceded by (1) strategy sessions, or (2) tactical discussions, or (3) meditations on time-travel paradoxes of Skynet and related devices.

I liked it. I do not sit through films I don't like. I like Terminator films. Period.
Yesterday I watched The Queen of Katwe, and I liked that, too, and I always like Mira Nair's films.


After finishing with Terminator: Genysis, I took in a few blinks-worth of Suicide Squad - I figure I'll watch about 15 minutes per day to keep the evil from boiling over - and then I went to the good old computer, thinking I would be greeted with a few laughs about the new administration.

Fate, had something else in mind.


Steve Bannon Believes The Apocalypse Is Coming And War Is Inevitable
Trump’s top adviser thinks we’re in “the great Fourth Turning in American history.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-apocalypse_us_5898f02ee4b040613138a951?ref=yfp

... In Bannon’s view, we are in the midst of an existential war, and everything is a part of that conflict. Treaties must be torn up, enemies named, culture changed. Global conflagration, should it occur, would only prove the theory correct. For Bannon, the Fourth Turning has arrived. The Grey Champion, a messianic strongman figure, may have already emerged. The apocalypse is now...

... Strauss and Howe’s theory [which theory is the view held by Mr. Bannon] is based on a series of generational archetypes — the Artists, the Prophets, the Nomads and the Heroes — that sound like they were pulled from a dystopian young adult fiction series. Each complete four-part cycle, or saeculum, takes about 80 to 100 years, in Strauss and Howe’s reckoning. The Fourth Turning, which the authors published in 1997, focuses on the final, apocalyptic part of the cycle.

Strauss and Howe postulate that during this Fourth Turning crisis, an unexpected leader will emerge from an older generation to lead the nation, and what they call the “Hero” generation (in this case, millennials), to a new order. This person is known as the Grey Champion. An election or another event — perhaps a war — will bring this person to power, and their regime will rule throughout the crisis...

I was not entirely honest with you about this morning.
Before I had gotten out of bed, I was thinking of fears and flight; I was thinking of the things that haunt my mind and bedevil me; I was thinking of the strange imaginings that sometimes sap my strength in the marches of the night...
Then I got up made coffee, thought of somethings I had to do, then sat down to watch the rest of Terminator: Genysis. I do not quite understand the continuous softening of Sarah Connor in the series of movies, but it was OK...

I have mentioned I often was oppressed by a vision of a future dystopic. This was back in the 80s and before, well before most of the modern day bleak future visions, but not before Brave New World, 1984, and A Chronicle for Leibowitz.

I knew such things were madness, because I lived in the USA, powerful, wealthy, religious.
And since the turn of the century, I saw 9/11, the 2008 Financial Crisis during which you could see how nervous the President and the Treasury Secretary were on TV, and I have now seen the abomination of desolation in the holy place....

I hope to God the Bannon article is nonsense, for the idolatry of one's own mind in pretending to know the infinite mind of God is spiritual death.


--

The Grey Mech is a character is Gregory Benford's Sailing Bright Eternity (1995), a mechanical device of ultra-potent destructiveness.
Why grey? Why is Strauss and Howe's champion grey?
What about Mr. Grey in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher?

"Young man, why are you here? You know we have an appointment in Samarra t'morra!"

----

Cinéma En Plein Air [02/08/2017 - answer]

Answer to yesterday's clue:

No Country For Old Men


remember:

?
--

Cinéma En Plein Air [02/08/2017 - clue]

I show you a picture of something very much germane and involved in a movie and you guess the movie. Got it?

Original post http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2017/01/cinema-en-plein-air-01202017-clue.html

--

A Lonely Conclave

--
joel dinda / flickr

No Country For Old Men

"It's a mess, ain't it, Sheriff?"


"If it ain't, it'll do 'til the real mess gets here."


==========


Yahoo News

'Divorced from reality': CBS anchor slams Trump after wild day of inaccurate comments
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/divorced-reality-cbs-anchor-slams-021117646.html

... "It has been a busy day for presidential statements divorced from reality," Pelley said on Monday's edition of "CBS Evening News."

... First on his list was Trump's stunning claim, made in a speech to military leaders in Florida, that media outlets had deliberately not reported incidents of terrorism.

A great way to start the day... a bowl of Wheaties and a earful of Trumpies.

--

End-Of-(Some)Times

 General Petraeus

photo: Jason Reed

A very good article on General Petraeus' address to Congress in late January:

The Fiscal Times
Gen. Petraeus: The Post-War Order Is in Danger of Collapse 
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2017/02/01/Gen-Petraeus-Post-War-Order-Danger-Collapse

...  "Americans should not take the current international order for granted," Petraeus said. "It did not will itself into existence. We created it. Likewise, it is not naturally self-sustaining. We have sustained it. If we stop doing so, it will fray and, eventually, collapse."...

It gives you a good idea what is at stake.

--

Continuous Transportation: Hybrid Vehicular Transport

Un État de Transport Continu
inspiré par le film Transperceneige

Bus Train

http://davidanimator.blogspot.com/2011/12/photoshopped-bus-train.html

--

Firefox Strikes Again!

All my computers were going crazy.
And I was going crazy trying to find out what was wrong with them.

So I turned on the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and looked at Processes. Firefox had 2 firefox.exe files running. One had over 700,000 K, the other over 300,000 K and I had no idea what was going on.
Then I looked at the Resources Monitor and saw that Free Memory was an extremely scarce resource.

So I Googled "2 firefox.exes running" and yadda-yadda-yadda came to the issue of Firefox e10s.....

and I don't care what they are....
I mean, I don't care what "e10s" are and why Firefox needs to slip them in on me and drive me crazy for a month or so, and just sit back and laugh at my discomfiture. I don't care. I don't want! Get it!??!

so I'm not going to go into why Firefox did sneak them in in one of their innumerable updates....

Anyway, I Googled again, found  https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1147868#question-reply

and followed the recipe, got rid of the doppelganger Firefox, and everything works one heck of a lot better.

Continuous Transportation: Moon Plane

Un État de Transport Continu
inspiré par le film Transperceneige

Yet another example of the newest aviation technology.


--

No Country For Old Men

"It's a mess, ain't it, Sheriff?"

"If it ain't, it'll do 'til the real mess gets here."


**********
**********

Ivanka Trump, Jared Kusher Stops LGBTQ Rights Rollback, Community NOT Impressed
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ivanka-trump-jared-kusher-stops-235656168.html

... In one of President Donald Trump’s latest proposed executive order, he has threatened the rights of the LGBTQ community with a draft that would rescind Obama’s protection on the minority. “Fortunately,” as Ivanka’s press highlights, it was her and husband Jared Kushner who helped kill the suggested executive order...

I would be cautious on those days when Ivanka has a cold and is not hanging around the White House. This is becoming very Game-of-Thrones-ish, don't you think?


--

The Grimoire Of Imagination!

Moody Teenaged Nero Listening to Seneca, his Tutor

When I was reading Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I often wondered what it would be like to have a leader of state who was a child, like Nero who assumed the purple at the age of 17 after the death of Claudius. Seneca, the philosopher, became a tutor to Nero when the future emperor was 12. When Nero became emperor, Seneca became his advisor.

In the year 59, Nero arranged the murder of his mother, Agrippina, and Seneca as imperial advisor was involved in the matricide. Seneca wrote to the Senate exculpating Nero for this crime.


I speak of the Seneca as adopted by Christianity, the Seneca as Stoic Philosopher, attempting to teach Nero moderation. How ghastly it must have been to watch his charge go from crime to even greater crime!
To have a totally out-of-control emperor leading the empire! And to have tutored him for years, only to see his teachings ignored!

Young Nero Being Tutored

In actuality, I think Seneca was a hypocritical scoundrel, who wrote of Philosophy merely as an exercise in rhetoric. Seneca was an obsequious flatterer of an egomaniac, an amoral philanderer, and a man who used his position of power to cheat and steal from those less powerful.

Still he was able to watch his charge, Nero, degenerate and even to partake in his crimes, powerless to even lift a hand in protest. No wonder he as a Stoic, for it made a virtue of his wretched morality.

An unbalanced child-emperor surrounded by scoundrels... I could never think the reality of such a thing in the the grimoire of imagination!


--

Cinéma En Plein Air [02/03/2017 - answer]

Answer to yesterday's clue...

Ben-Hur
1959          Dir: William Wyler        

Judah Ben-Hur  (Charlton Heston)  was oarsman at seat #41 on the war trireme of Quintus Arrius   (Jack Hawkins) .

--

Cinéma En Plein Air [02/03/2017 - clue]

I show you a picture of something very much germane and involved in a movie and you guess the movie. Got it?

Way too easy.


--

Good Neighbors Make Good Walls

Symbolic Mexican Wall 

The Times of Israel
Mexican Jews voice wall-to-wall outrage over Netanyahu tweet
As PM lauds efficacy of Israeli barrier, Jewish community south of the US border pans him as Trump’s ‘lackey’
http://www.timesofisrael.com/mexican-jews-voice-wall-to-wall-outrage-over-netanyahu-tweet/

In kosher stores, synagogues and intellectual circles, Mexico’s small Jewish community condemned the Israeli prime minister’s support for US President Donald Trump’s border wall as disappointing and shameful.

“As Mexicans, as Jews, we oppose the construction of a wall, but we support cooperation between the two countries [Mexico and the US],” said Rabbi Marcelo Rittner of Comunidad Bet El in Mexico City, in a January 30 statement in Spanish.

The statement was addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and published on the Enlace Judio (Jewish Network) website.

Mexico demanded an apology after Netanyahu tweeted on Saturday night in support of Trump’s proposed wall spanning the Mexican border, saying a similar plan along Israel’s southern frontier had been a success.

Netanyahu did not apologize, saying he had not been commenting on US-Mexico relations in the tweet. He added he had a “long, fruitful and very friendly relationship” with Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto...

Good walls really do make good neighbors.
Walls don't make human neighbors "good". It takes at least a village to make a human being good, not merely a wall. It is the wall itself that is a good neighbor, sort of a stoic type, doesn't say much, never asks to borrow your power tools, and whatnot.

Other examples of wonderful neighbors:

Hadrian's Wall

(... as depicted in an illustration for the original edition of Rudyard Kipling's "On the Great Wall" (1906). In this image, the height of the wall is much exaggerated, but it is true that the Roman Empire had built a complex system of fortifications along its borders. However, as the empire's economy declined, it couldn't sustain any more the kind of complexity that was possible at its peak. Complexity has a cost and its returns are not always proportional to it. So it was for the Roman fortifications, that were abandoned in early 5th century A.D., so it may be for some of our infrastructures, such as nuclear energy or manned space exploration .)  
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/03/great-technological-wall.html

Netanyahu's Wall with Partiers

Berlin Wall with More Partiers

"Mr. Gorbachev, build up that wall so we may par-tee!

"

Interestingly enough, yesterday there was a story in Yahoo News about a small business CEO who said that Mr. Trump reminded him greatly of Mr. Reagan. 

Now that was interesting, since one did not like walls and one loves them.

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