Angels Wept
Today love has completely gutted me.
I am lying in the market like a
Filleted grouper,
Speechless,
Every desire and sinew absolutely silent
But I am still so fresh.
Everything is now the same to me.
Listen:
The touch of a beautiful woman
As she lifts me near,
Drawing my scent into her body;
She thinks about taking me home.
The touch of a wondrous fly
Drinking my vital fluids
Through a strange shaped flute,
The sun laying its radiant gaze against my cheek,
Human voices and the breeze from a passing
Horse's tail,
All send miraculous currents into
My world.
God's beauty has split me wide open.
Throw Hafiz on a scale,
Wrap me in cloth,
Bring me home.
Lift a piece of my knowledge to your lips
So I can melt inside of you
And sing.
From The Federalist:
Ah, yes, "campaign finance reform" -- for politicos the functional equivalent of condoms!and:
Giving a bureaucrat a new rule is like handing a pyromaniac a lighted match in a haymow. -- Ronald Reaganand:
A Swedish court ruled that a sperm donor cannot get off that lightly, giving only at the doctor's office, but must behave as a "financial father" by paying child support for three children after the separation of lesbian couple rearing his offspring. As the children's biological father he is obliged to pay $265 monthly after the women's 10-year relationship ended.
From drugsense:
"Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favour that I should like to ask," said he.and:
"Name it." (Said the Lord).
"Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws."
"What, wretch! You his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul - you ask for the right to make his laws?"
"Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself."
It was so ordered.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. -- Dresden James
J. Orlin Grabbe - Homeland Security - pictorial commentary on what the Department of Homeland Defense is doing to the U.S. Constitution. Too true.
The Week Online with DRCNet - Lies, Damn Lies, and "The Economic Costs of Drug Abuse in the United States, 1992-1998" - the o.n.d.c.p. has released a study where they conflate the costs of the drug war with the costs of illegal drugs. Mighty convenient, eh? Since it costs us so much to fight drugs, you should give us more money to make it cost more so we can later ask you for more money for the same reason...
There's only one problem: The study is bunk. It is rife with methodological problems and questionable assumptions, but one huge flaw, admitted by the authors, screams out at the serious reader: The study conflates the economic costs of "drug abuse" (which in fed-speak means any use of proscribed drugs) with the costs of enforcing prohibition. In other words, if you are arrested for smoking pot, the wages of the police officer who arrested you, the district attorney who prosecuted you, the judge who sentenced you, the guards who jailed you, the functionary who drug-tested you, and the parole officer who supervised you all become part of the cost of drug abuse. And the fact that you could not work while you were in jail? Those lost wages are also considered a cost of drug abuse, not prohibition.
bob lonsberry - A Girl on the Radio - a very nice story about repentance.
George F. Smith at Laissez Faire Electronic Times - Campaign Finance Reform: Liberty's Latest Cure? - Big Brother marches on.
"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me constantly, you must be Big Brother." -- rule of subjection
Tibor R. Machan at Laissez Faire Electronic Times - Government as Looting Machine - why government grows without limit with a couple of examples from Mr. Machan's stints with the Air Force and the Department of Education.
Joseph Sobran at LewRockwell.com - Words and Power - how the courts have completely destroyed the very concept of law. [kaba]
How can this be? Well, modern jurisprudence is a verbal form of alchemy. The "experts" can pick out a couple of phrases from widely separated clauses of the Constitution, combine them, find "penumbras" and "emanations" in them, appeal to precedents laid down by earlier "experts," and presto! Black means white, and day means night. And in the end, the government is more powerful -- and lawless -- than before.
Oliver Del Signore at Backwoods Home Magazine - Thanks For Nothing, Dell - the trials and tribulations of getting an old machine serviced by Dell. Day 16, and his machine is still broken. And they promised next day service when he bought the thing. Bottom line: Dell makes great machines, but don't expect them to fix them if they break.
