The Gallup Poll finds “the devil you don’t know” running, at this point, perfectly even with Obama.
U.S. registered voters are evenly split about whether they would back President Barack Obama for re-election in 2012 (45%) or “the Republican Party’s candidate” (45%). …
Results from a parallel question Gallup asked during the presidencies of George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush show both of those presidents performing better on this re-elect measure at comparable points in their third years in office than Obama does today. ..
[T]he poll suggests Obama is relatively more vulnerable than former President George W. Bush at this point in his presidency.
When Gallup polled voters in 2003 to test Bush’s reelection prospects, the Texas Republican led a generic Democrat 47-39 percent.
These kind of polling results suggest that any credible Republican capable of uniting opponents of the current president, not destroyed by scandal or a major gaffe, would be able to defeat Obama.
I sincerely wish that we had a demigod like Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan to run, but I expect most of us will be happy to settle for anyone reliably committed to the kind of economic principles required to fix the American economy who seems to possess sufficient determination to do the job.
My husband has a long record of money problems. He runs up huge credit-card bills and at the end of the month, if I try to pay them off, he shouts at me, saying I am stealing his money. He says pay the minimum and let our kids worry about the rest, but already we can hardly keep up with the interest. …
Signed, Lost in DC
Dear Lost:
Stop whining, Michelle. You can divorce the jerk any time you want. The rest of us are stuck with him for two more years!
Change. When I entered Yale as a freshman, back during the Consulate of Plancus, we thought that we were living in the Age of Marvels, occupying the privileged throne at the very summit and pinnacle of human technological civilization, because we could (nearly) all arrive at college armed with brand, spanking new Royal electric portable typewriters.
The image of Nathan Hale skillfully cutting goose quills to suitable points for penning his Yale examinations in Attic Greek did not fail to cross our minds, as we reveled in possession and use of Coerasable Bond typing paper and found ourselves able to compose our assigned essays with crisp and languidly easy electronic keystrokes, not even needing to pound our way through them on then already-old-fashioned manual typewriters.
I had one acquaintance from so humble a background that he laboriously hand-wrote his first assigned paper, producing a 150-page dialogue between Socrates and the Nihilist in response to an assigned 5-page paper on the Theaetetus.
I believe Yale issues every entering freshman these days with his own Apple notebook PC. (I was reflecting on this just now, and feeling a bit of pity for the Yalies of today who will discover eventually that the real world typically gets by with cheaper PCs, running Windows.)
I am unusually in touch with modern life for someone of my advanced years. I have loads of Yale undergraduate friends (from Yale conservative organizational circles) on Facebook, so I enjoy a privileged access to life in 2011.
I was highly amused to discover that Yale undergraduates today remain keen optimizers, and express their own perfection of life opportunities these days by compensating for the limited social acquaintance representing the inevitable price of overachieving tooledness by employing an Internet service to supply random luncheon connections with equally lonely strangers.
Miserable, isolated (probably premed), and unhappy (and at Yale)? Try YaleLunch.com (in beta).
And, if it is all too much to bear and you need to vent. Or if, alternatively, things are going perfectly swimmingly and you desire to gloat, drop by YALE FML and share your anonymous one-line descriptions of your personal metaphysical state. Your contemporaries will respond with words of wisdom and expressions of heartfelt sympathy along the lines of this posted response. (which, since the database of that beta seems not to be working, I will explain reads: NO ONE GIVES A F*CK.)
San Diego assistant port director Al Hallor, also a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, told local ABC affiliate Channel 10 News that authorities have uncovered “weapons of mass effect” in an interview that aired Feb. 11.
Hallor did not say where WMD had been located. He only denied that they had not been found at the port of San Diego. Hallor also did not identify the type of WMD he was referring to, but that reply strongly suggested that he was aware of the apprehension on US soil of at least one nuclear device or the components for a dirty bomb.
“At the airport, seaport, at our port of entry we have not this past fiscal year, but our partner agencies have found those things,” he said.
Reporter: Do you ever find things that are dangerous like a chemical agent or a weaponised device?
Mr Hallor: At the airport, seaport, at our port of entry we have not this past fiscal year, but our partner agencies have found those things.
Reporter: So, specifically, you’re looking for the dirty bomb? You’re looking for the nuclear device?
Mr Hallor: Correct. Weapons of mass effect.
Reporter: You ever found one?
Mr Hallor: Not at this location.
Reporter: But they have found them?
Mr Hallor: Yes.
Reporter: You never found one in San Diego though?
Mr Hallor: I would say at at the port of San Diego we have not.
The anticipated 2012 budget deficit will be $1,500,000 million ($1.5 trillion). This means we are borrowing that amount from our children to fund all of the Democrats’ Utopian spending programs.
Finally, the president has proposed “tough budget cuts” that total $775 million. No, that’s not a joke.
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It is generally recognized by just about all members of the commentariat with IQs higher than room temperature that America’s projected entitlement spending was unsustainable… before Obamacare was added. The federal deficit threatens this country’s current economic, political, and military capabilities and promises to undermine the prosperity of future generations.
The president’s response is disappointing even to people on the left. Andrew Sullivan was a particularly conspicuous bellwether today, departing from his customary role of flack and harshly criticizing Obama.
[T]his president is too weak, too cautious, too beholden to politics over policy to lead. In this budget, in his refusal to do anything concrete to tackle the looming entitlement debt, in his failure to address the generational injustice, in his blithe indifference to the increasing danger of default, he has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests. Like his State of the Union, this budget is good short term politics but such a massive pile of fiscal bullshit it makes it perfectly clear that Obama is kicking this vital issue down the road.
To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you’re fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama’s cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America’s fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end.
Jacopo Bassano, St Valentine Baptizing St Lucilla, 1575, oil on canvas, Museo Civico, Bassano del Grappa
The popular customs associated with Saint Valentine’s Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e., half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer’s Parliament of Foules we read:
For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.
For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers’ tokens. Both the French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain allusions to the practice. Perhaps the earliest to be found is in the 34th and 35th Ballades of the bilingual poet, John Gower, written in French; but Lydgate and Clauvowe supply other examples. Those who chose each other under these circumstances seem to have been called by each other their Valentines.
In the Paston Letters, Dame Elizabeth Brews writes thus about a match she hopes to make for her daughter (we modernize the spelling), addressing the favoured suitor:
And, cousin mine, upon Monday is Saint Valentine’s Day and every bird chooses himself a mate, and if it like you to come on Thursday night, and make provision that you may abide till then, I trust to God that ye shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion.
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From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869: Feast Day: St. Valentine, priest and martyr, circ. 270.
ST. VALENTINE’S DAY
Valentine’s Day is now almost everywhere a much degenerated festival, the only observance of any note consisting merely of the sending of jocular anonymous letters to parties whom one wishes to quiz, and this confined very much to the humbler classes. The approach of the day is now heralded by the appearance in the print-sellers’ shop windows of vast numbers of missives calculated for use on this occasion, each generally consisting of a single sheet of post paper, on the first page of which is seen some ridiculous coloured caricature of the male or female figure, with a few burlesque verses below. More rarely, the print is of a sentimental kind, such as a view of Hymen’s altar, with a pair undergoing initiation into wedded happiness before it, while Cupid flutters above, and hearts transfixed with his darts decorate the corners. Maid-servants and young fellows interchange such epistles with each other on the 14th of February, no doubt conceiving that the joke is amazingly good: and, generally, the newspapers do not fail to record that the London postmen delivered so many hundred thousand more letters on that day than they do in general. Such is nearly the whole extent of the observances now peculiar to St. Valentine’s Day.
At no remote period it was very different. Ridiculous letters were unknown: and, if letters of any kind were sent, they contained only a courteous profession of attachment from some young man to some young maiden, honeyed with a few compliments to her various perfections, and expressive of a hope that his love might meet with return. But the true proper ceremony of St. Valentine’s Day was the drawing of a kind of lottery, followed by ceremonies not much unlike what is generally called the game of forfeits. Misson, a learned traveller, of the early part of the last century, gives apparently a correct account of the principal ceremonial of the day.
‘On the eve of St. Valentine’s Day,’ he says, ‘the young folks in England and Scotland, by a very ancient custom, celebrate a little festival. An equal number of maids and bachelors get together: each writes their true or some feigned name upon separate billets, which they roll up, and draw by way of lots, the maids taking the men’s billets, and the men the maids’: so that each of the young men lights upon a girl that he calls his valentine, and each of the girls upon a young man whom she calls hers. By this means each has two valentines: but the man sticks faster to the valentine that has fallen to him than to the valentine to whom he is fallen. Fortune having thus divided the company into so many couples, the valentines give balls and treats to their mistresses, wear their billets several days upon their bosoms or sleeves, and this little sport often ends in love.’
St. Valentine’s Day is alluded to by Shakespeare and by Chaucer, and also by the poet Lydgate (who died in 1440).
The origin of these peculiar observances of St. Valentine’s Day is a subject of some obscurity. The saint himself, who was a priest of Rome, martyred in the third century, seems to have had nothing to do with the matter, beyond the accident of his day being used for the purpose. Mr. Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare, says:
‘It was the practice in ancient Rome, during a great part of the month of February, to celebrate the Lupercalia, which were feasts in honour of Pan and Juno. whence the latter deity was named Februata, Februalis, and Februlla. On this occasion, amidst a variety of ceremonies, the names of young women were put into a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. The pastors of the early Christian church, who, by every possible means, endeavoured to eradicate the vestiges of pagan superstitions, and chiefly by some commutations of their forms, substituted, in the present instance, the names of particular saints instead of those of the women: and as the festival of the Lupercalia had commenced about the middle of February, they appear to have chosen St. Valentine’s Day for celebrating the new feast, because it occurred nearly at the same time.”
February 14th, prior to 1969, was the feast day of two, or possibly three, saints and martyrs named Valentine, all reputedly of the Third Century.
The first Valentine, legend holds, was a physician and priest in Rome, arrested for giving aid to martyrs in prison, who while there converted his jailer by restoring sight to the jailer’s daughter. He was executed by being beaten with clubs, and afterwards beheaded, February 14, 270. He is traditionally the patron of affianced couples, bee keepers, lovers, travellers, young people, and greeting card manufacturers, and his special assistance may be sought in conection with epilepsy, fainting, and plague.
A second St. Valentine, reportedly bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) was also allegedly martyred under Claudius II, and also allegedly buried along the Flaminian Way.
A third St. Valentine is said to have also been martyred in Roman times, along with companions, in Africa.
Because of a lack of historical evidence, the Roman Catholic Church dropped the February 14th feast of St. Valentine from its calendar in 1969.
China intentionally insulted the United States during the recent state visit by Hu Jintao by arranging for a Chinese pianist to play a Korean War-era anti-American propaganda song (referring to Americans as “jackals”) in the White House.
Well, you have to hand it to Obama. He has struck back devastatingly, and with truly Oriental cruelty, by presenting the Chinese leader with a huge and magnificently preposterous piece of modern art, a massive semi-abstract oil painting by a couple of Chinese brothers from Chicago, featuring caricature images of Ronald Reagan and seven of the worst presidents in US history plus a spiral line intended to represent the great Wall of China on a textured background.
Ownership of this noisome object (which looks like a failed elementary school art project) would be declined by the gaudiest Szechaun restaurant in San Francisco, but the Chinese People’s Republic will have to hang it in a place of honor (being a state gift from the American president, after all), where it will loom as a permanent reminder not to mess with the United States. Zhou you, China!
Ben M. Dronsick (alas! not available on line except to special electronic subscribers) responded in Wednesday’s Fauquier Democrat to the Washington Post’s omission of praise of the lack of growth in rural Fauquier County by offering a few comparisons between Fauquier County and our neighboring Northern Virginia counties to the north and east.
In FAUQUIER County: Garden tea-party conversation might reminisce about Princess Di.
In LOUDOUN County: Garden tea-party conversation might revolve around princess-cut diamonds.
In PRINCE WILLIAM County: Garden variety tea-party conservatives might be too risky to quote in print.
In FAUQUIER County: Many houses are old, yet look as if they were constructed yesterday.
In LOUDOUN County: Many houses were constructed yesterday, yet look old.
In PRINCE WILLIAM County: Most housing developments look as if they were constructed yesterday, and were.
In FAUQUIER County: Folks want to know where your people are from.
In LOUDOUN County: Folks want to know where your dollars are going.
In PRINCE WILLIAM County: Police want to know where your papers are.
In FAUQUIER County: Realtors advertise the number of square feet under roof.
In LOUDOUN County: Realtors advertise the average number of chimneys under construction.
In PRINCE WILLIAM County: Realtors are too under¬employed to advertise.
In FAUQUIER County: Many original property lines were surveyed by George Washington.
In LOUDOUN County: Many original property lines were subdivided by G.L. Homes.
In PRINCE WILLIAM County: There aren’t any original property lines left.
In FAUQUIER County: Paintings depicting the sport of foxhunting are proudly displayed in people’s homes.
In LOUDOUN County: People’s homes sport paintings of themselves proudly depicted as foxhunting.
In PRINCE WILLIAM County: There aren’t any foxes left.
In FAUQUIER County: The closest one can get to Ireland is McMahon’s.
In LOUDOUN County: The closest one can get to Ireland is Bono’s McMansion.
In PRINCE WILLIAM County: The closest one can get to Ireland is green milkshakes at McDonalds.
In FAUQUIER County: “Farm Use” is a license plate.
In LOUDOUN County: “Farm Use” is a tax strategy.
In PRINCE WILLIAM County: “Farm Use” is a theme at Cracker Barrel.
In FAUQUIER County: Folks say Y’all” to be polite.
In LOUDOUN County: Folks say Y’all” to be politically correct.
In PRINCE WILLIAM County: There is no translation for Y’all.”
Triplets? Not by a Great Meadow mile. No wonder Fauquier was left out.
I used to live in Loudoun County, but early this year moved down to Fauquier County, deeper into Virginia.
