Idaho Alaska

That is the answer ... what is the question? If Miss Issippi lent Miss Ouri her New Jersey, what would Dela Ware? Why is this pertinent? Because President Obama is using a trip to Alaska today to once more pitch his global warming hokum to the uninformed ... see: AP News Story ... and Della would then not need her New Jersey. I suspect that The Barry's advance team is now searching the coast off of this state for some poor polar bear stuck on a melting ice floe ... in order to get a money shot to put on the front pages of American newspapers. After all ... isn't the kind of pictorial misinformation that the majority of global-warming alarmists use to justify their hysteria?

But now for the rest of the story ... if you are even a bit interested. It seems that three German scientists have determined that the small global warming blip at the end of the last century was within normal limits, but, more importantly, that the world is now entering a sixty-year cooling period. If you, dear reader, are willing to listen to these scientists (who must not be part of the 97% of those scientists who claim we are doomed), then read John Hinderaker's posting on the Powerline blog ... see: Nothing Unusual.

If an extended cooling period is indeed what is in store for the world, then President Obama's arm-waving CO2 killing initiatives are likely to make matters worse. Wouldn't that be a unique legacy for our current monarch? (Of course, the Kool-Aid drinkers will claim that we got cooler because of Obama's economy-crippling efforts ...)

And for a bit of sweet, sweet irony, President Obama is likely to be met with some rare summer snow in Alaska today ... now wouldn't that be special ... see: Dr. Roy Spencer Item.

reddit Gallery CCCXXI

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Kitten and Baby Goat

Size of Neutron Star

C-5 Galaxy

Incan Masonry

Japanese Temple in the Snow

reddit Gallery CCCXX -- Sunrise/Sunset

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Lady Liberty Sunset

Rural China Sunrise

Smokey Sunset

Sunrise over Cordillera Blanca, Peru

African Sunset

The Great Seducer

Donald Trump is a great seducer. He gives young children at the Iowa State Fair rides on his helicopter. He promises old children to build the Trump wall across our southern border with Mexico ... actually now only 1000 miles of a Trump wall for, apparently, it is not needed along the other 900 miles (sound familiar?) Whether The Donald is worth ten billion dollars is unimportant because he behaves as though he is worth that much ... and that is all that counts.

Trump is obviously a huckster in the tradition of P.T. Barnum and Robert Ripley ... and Americans are suckers for hucksters. So there seems an outside chance that Donald Trump might become our next president. I do believe that he could do a ton of good in this role, but he could also do a lot of damage.

If Trump were to go in worth $10 billion, I suspect he might come out worth $50 billion ... unless some strict ethical standards were enforced during his tenure. And, for some stupid reason, this country has gotten quite lax in enforcing ethical guidelines. Perhaps one way that this might be accomplished would be for Trump to be forced to keep Loretta Lynch on as Attorney General? Thus, although Trump might purge the rest of his cabinet of incompetent political hacks, the Aegean Stables at the Department of Justice would have to wait for its catharsis until our next president.

Act of Love

Republican candidate for president, Jeb Bush, has described the motivation of entire families immigrating illegally into the United States as an "act of love." And in many cases this may be so ... an attempt to escape the third-world hell hole from whence they came. And so, many in the liberal media continually and joyfully ask the hypothetical question of Republican candidates, "How can you deport entire families back to their countries?" ... trying to paint these GOPers as heartless Simon Legrees.

Well, let me intercede and offer that there are entire families that should be or should have been deported ... and I offer, as a perfect example, the Tsarnaev family ... a family that entered into the United States fraudulently as political refugees from their native Kyrgyzstan (if they were so endangered, how could they continually travel back and forth to there and Dagestan without incident?) It also seems clear that this family has continually abused the welfare system in this country as at least all four of their children seem to have lived pretty much entirely off of the U.S. taxpayer ... and, I strongly suspect, that the parents are also receiving U.S. government transfer payments back to their homeland. The mother has also been found to be a serial shoplifter, and her two sons, serial murders ... and were the infamous Boston Marathon terrorists.

If this one family, with their then children, should have never been allowed to stay in the U.S., then there surely must be many others ... if we can gather up the gumption to identify these bad apples and deport them. And so, if U.S. immigration officials had been a little more hard hearted toward the Tsarnaev family with four little children, they would have saved this country considerable monies, prevented four, possible seven murders, and saved injuries to 264 Americans ... many with the loss of limbs. This would have been an act of love toward the people who pay these government workers' salaries.

The Next Presidential Library

There is a search on to find the architect for Obama's presidential library (and hoops court) ... to be eventually built on the South Side of Chicago ... see: New York Times Article. The funds for this library and museum are said to come from the Barack Obama Foundation (sound familiar?) which is supposed to be a "privately" funded organization expecting to raise one billion dollars. (The recent Senator Ted Kennedy Institute was also claimed to be privately funded ... but ended up spending $43 million of taxpayer monies ... see: The Kennedy Insultitute.)

And read the above referenced NY Times article to marvel in all the liberal claptrap language that is being used to describe the objectives of the edifice ... including displaying "the principles of biomimicry," "smart, sustainable and inclusive economic growth"  and "a spirit of optimism and hope."

Considering the dog's breakfast that the Obama presidency will have left for this country ... economically, domestic-policy-wise and foreign-policy-wise ... may I suggest that the architect best suited to visually represent these ludicrous lefty disasters is Frank Gehry ... a few of whose works are displayed below (click to enlarge these images):

Biomuseo

Vitra Design Museum

Dancing House

Louis Vuitton Foundation

Immigration Facts

There are oodles of hype and  misinformation surrounding our immigration issue ... I strongly suspect this is on purpose. If the real numbers cannot be easily discovered, then politicians can demagogue to their hearts content. So when reliable statistics are reported ... such as 71% of illegal immigrants with children are on welfare (a 2009 statistic) and as many as 400,000 births to illegal immigrant households (anchor babies) occur in the U.S. every year (10% of all live births in this country) ... we are not surprised ... see: National Review Article.

Previously, during immigration surges, new arrivals had to forswear that they would not go on home relief ... and had to have an existing resident guarantee this condition. Now things have swung 180 degrees and liberal politicians often prefer that immigrants become wards of the state ... so that they might control their votes.

And, if you believe than non-citizens are not voting in this country, you are a bigger doofus than Adam Sandler in one of his silly movie roles. I strongly suspect that "community organizers" are responsible for much of this circumvention of the Constitutional restrictions re our voting laws  .. they are just ground operatives of the Democrat party ... and very often the U.S. taxpayer picks up the tab for this outrage.

Distractions

- The United States stock market is now in correction territory having fallen more than ten percent with the 500+ point plunge on Friday and a much bigger drop on Monday. A drop of 20+% in the coming days or weeks is not beyond reason and would presage a bear market equivalent to 2008.
- Economies around the world seem to be in trouble ... Russia, Brazil, Venezuela, China, Greece, Canada, and many others are all teetering on panic's edge due to the recent precipitous drop in oil prices ... now hovering just below $40 per barrel. Even Saudi Arabia is rapidly running out of sovereign funds and needs to tap into the world debt markets.
- ISIS, Boko Haram and other radical "religion of peace" groups are raping, enslaving and beheading thousands of Christians throughout the Mideast with almost no response from the Free World.
- Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are escalating to a very dangerous degree with exchanges of artillery fire and propaganda-laden saber-rattling.
- Illegal immigration is surging from third countries into Europe and the United States in unprecedented numbers with very little real resistance from the authorities and few solutions proffered ... other than from Donald Trump.
- Iran is being given the gift of $150 billion dollars to spend on terrorism and a clear path to an atomic weapon by the U.S. Secretary of State, John "Christmas in Cambodia" Kerry and our Imperial President.
- Islamic radical terrorist attacks on civilian and military innocents are almost a daily occurrence throughout the free world.
- The oceans may still be rising and the climate may still be changing despite China's pledge to start reducing its horrendous air pollution by 2030.
- The United States Federal Reserve Bank is on the horns of a dilemma. Either it raises interest rate sometime this Fall or it has almost no tools to deal with a possible new recession.

All these serious problems are but distractions to the leader of the free world whose primary focus is on his golf handicap ... which he is assiduously working on while he vacations unconcerned on Martha's Vineyard. Perhaps this singular focus is a form of denial ... to keep him from fretting about these other distraction.

reddit Gallery CCCXIX

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Antelope Canyon, Arizona

Father and Son

Unshorn for Six Years

Felix Unger's Closet

Kazakhstan Horse

Holy Meddler

Pope Francis is going to be addressing Congress on Sept. 24th and it is very likely that he will once again meddle in the internal affairs of the United States regarding our illegal immigration problem  ... see: Rollcall Article. This Pope continues to unveil his radical liberal views nurtured in that failed South American country, Argentina ... see: True Colors. To me, he seems more and more compelled to do something with his prominent facial appendage.

Maybe the United States should start telling this Pontiff about what he should be doing to revamp the Catholic Church? And also maybe the Vatican City should now house and feed a few hundred thousand illegal African immigrants who have been flooding into Italy?

FANG

The stock market is down almost 300 points today ... to continue a stock market slide that started a few months back. So far the Dow Jones Average is down over 9% and it looks like things are not yet done. A correction is -10%+ and a washout is usually around -20%. The stocks that I had previously cautioned you to watch out for are Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FANG) as precursors of a market correction... see: Timber!! ... are all down big ... about as bad as the overall market. Even though people love these stocks, they are being used as a source of funds for over-extended investors.

When will things turn around? If I knew this I would be a wealthy man (which I am not) ... maybe when the price of oil turns around? However, having sold a lot of my winners a while back to raise a cash reserve, I am starting to nibble on high-yield stocks and some defensive issues like gold and silver miners. Wish me luck ... and the same to you.

UN Inspections in Iran UPDATED

The analogies are obvious. Under heretofore secret codicils, the United Nations will let Iran use its own people to inspect and report on suspected site violations under the proposed Iran nuclear pact that the Obama/Kerry team has negotiated ... and is now trying to sell to Congress ... see: Associated Press Story for the disturbing details.

Although we are now fairly inured to its chicanery, can the Obama administration get even more duplicitous?

Afterward: Here is a link to the original text of the side agreement referred to in the Associated Press article ... Side Agreement. As Scott Johnson of the Powerline blog, who posted this link states, "The side deal shows President Obama and administration officials to be voluble liars on critically important matters inherent in the deal with Iran." If you want to go to the referenced Powerline post, here it is: Scott Johnson Posting.

Anchor Babies

You've heard the liberal talking points ... you can' deport 11-12 million illegal aliens ... it would cost trillions of dollars to do so ... how are you going to overturn the Constitution? (Not that we haven't done this in the past.) These shibboleths are just a bunch of hogwash. We can indeed fix our illegal immigration problem if we have the spine to do it.

Donald Trump was confronted with a reporter's hostile question at the Iowa State Fair Monday about the high cost of deporting all the illegal aliens. His answer was, as usual, right on point ... "What does it cost us not to deport them. We either have a nation or we don't have a nation." As it turns out there is a recent analysis on what it actually might cost to round up and deport some 11-12 million illegal aliens (CNBC calls them "undocumented workers" ... we should only hope that they all are working). The number arrived at was 5 to 15 billion dollars a year over a twenty year period ... see: a somewhat slanted  CNBC Article. To me 10 billion dollars a year is a mere pittance ... a rounding error in the United States' $3.8 trillion annual budget.

I further suggest that it is vital we start these deportations with the dangerous criminals ... and leave the ones with verifiable jobs and families to the latter years. In between here would be my rough priorities in terms of who gets booted out ... gang members and small-time criminals with multiple misdemeanors ... those granted amnesty fraudulently  ... illegals from terrorist nations ... aliens carrying false or multiple identities ... the mentally unstable ... people on welfare or who have come here to drop anchor babies ... and, finally, non-core family members of illegals. But I might make an exception for illegals who have served in our armed forces for two or more years and who have been honorably discharged.

And Donald Trump's (actually Jeff Session's) suggestion on how to pay for these deportations ... with a tax on the $123 billion of remittances that aliens send home every year ... makes enormous sense ... see: Business Insider Story.  A 5% tax should do it.

The Ideal Candidate

I've been musing over and over about who might be the best candidate for president in 2016 ... and I keep coming up with an amalgamation of the current field of aspirants. What would comprise such an ideal candidate?

Marco Rubio's integrity
Hillary Clinton's money
Donald Trump's immigration policy
Ben Carson's humility
Carly Fiorino's straight talk
Jeb Bush's looks
Bernie Sander's crowds
Scott Walker's leadership
Ted Cruz's love of Constitution
John Kasich's fiscal policy experience
Chris Christie's toughness
Bobby Jindal's patriotism
Mike Huckabee's populism
George Pataki's judgment
Rand Paul's outside-the-box thinking
Rick Santorum's doggedness
Lindsey Graham's foreign policy thinking

I've left a few out ... but maybe we can use them for kissing babies?

Amazon.com

Many people believe that CEO Jeff Bezos has created a monster ... while others feel that Amazon's dog-eat-dog culture is just what was needed to propel a small on-line bookseller into the most valuable retailer in the United States ... having just recently surpassed Walmart in its stock-market valuation.

Clearly, Amazon.com has taken the Darwinian corporate culling culture developed at General Electric a number of steps further ... to the point where it's high turnover rates (half of its employees last just one year and only 15% of its employees last five years) might eventually be its undoing. The New York Times has done a very long, fascinating and in-depth article on Amazon which exposes not just its many maniacal successes but also its disturbing ugly warts ... see: New York Times Story.

The older I get, the more I believe that capitalistic success is very often predicated on a Messianic vision on the part of corporate founders ... from John D. Rockefeller to Henry Ford to Thomas Watson to Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos. And although there might be much personal employee suffering along the way, the end result is, for a time, an "insanely" transformative company. After you have digested the above article, see if you can't somehow forgive the tyranny that many of these corporate founders have engaged in to birth their visions. I may not like it, but I can forgive it ... such is "invisible hand" of capitalism.

Sifting the Candidates

Integrity, experience, judgment and leadership ... these are, to me, the four essential characteristics that one should look for when selecting our next Commander in Chief. To me most candidates who have thrown their hats in the ring so far ... from both of our parties ... lack one or more of these attributes ... Hillary Clinton comes up short on judgment and integrity ... Donald Trump, on integrity ... Bernie Sanders, on experience and judgment ... Jen Bush, on judgment and leadership ... Marco Rubio, on experience and judgment ... Mark O'Malley, on integrity and judgement ... Rick Santorum, on leadership and experience ... Rand Paul, on experience and judgment ... Ben Carson, on experience ... Ted Cruz, on experience and integrity ... Lindsey Graham, on experience and leadership ... Chris Christie, on judgment ... Bobby Jindal, on leadership ... Lincoln Chafee, on all four ... Rick Perry, on judgment ... Jim Webb, on experience ... Mike Huckabee, on leadership ... Jim Gilmore, on leadersihip ... and, if he runs, Joe Biden, on integrity and leadership.

The only candidates that I feel have all four traits are George Pataki, Scott Walker, Carly Fiorino, and John Kasich ... none of whom are currently leading in the polls. And Pataki also seems to lack a certain personal dynamism to propel him even later in his campaigns. So this leaves us, I think, with Kasich, Walker and Fiorino ... any of whom, by this sifting process, might have a real eventual shot at the presidency. People, you first heard it here ...

Afterward: Thinking objectively, our current president had or has none of these four characteristics ... so there must have be something else that was at work in 2008 and 2012.

reddit Gallery CCCXVIII

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

A Classic Custom Car

Carpet Weavers in Iran

Another 80-Year Old Classic

Iridescent Rainbow Cloud in Himalaya

Camel Train in the Gobi Desert

Flag Ceremony

Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Havana, Cuba today to mark the official opening of the United States Embassy there with a flag ceremony. He showed up in a Che Guevara tee shirt and cutaways. And, instead of hoisting the Stars and Stripes there for the first time in fifty-four years, he threw Old Glory over the embassy fence.

But before leaving to return to the United States, Kerry was rumored to be seeking to buy a large parcel of prime ocean-front property at a rock-bottom price. He also was thought to be buying a few cases of the best Cuban cigars.

Afterward: Since my wife didn't understand the reference of throwing the flag over the fence, I guess I need to explain. John Kerry, who once served in Viet Nam, became an anti-war activist (see above picture) and, in order to show his displeasure, threw his military medals over the White House fence. Years later someone visiting Senator Kerry's office saw his medals on the wall and ask where they came from. Kerry responded, "Oh, those were someone else's medals that I threw."

Immigrants

The federal government has just published some startling numbers on the number of immigrants in the United States ... see: Washington Examiner Story. This U.S. Census Bureau report does not break out the difference between legal and illegal immigrants, but it does indicate that the totals of the two grew by 1.7 million just in 2014 and 4.1 million from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2015. As can be seen, this is obviously far more than the norm for this number. The reason for this clearly-planned surge is twofold ... the Democrats' desire for new liberal voters and U.S. farmers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's and Silicone Valley's desire for more cheap labor ... independent of what it might be doing to this country.

The "official" total number of immigrants is 42.1 million (see my previous blog: Verklempt) and the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States now (at the end of the second quarter of 2015) totals 12.1 million. The total population of Mexico is 123.8 million which says that the United States now harbors roughly 1/10 of their people ... who, in turn, send back to Mexico about $23 billion a year ... see: Daily Mail Story ... which is approximately $1900 per immigrant. This (not including United States transfer payments) represents 1.2% of Mexico's GNP of $1.97 trillion. Perhaps Mexico is incented to allow these emigrants to come here?

Obviously these numbers indicate that Americans are feeling the pressure of this flood of immigrants in loss of job opportunities, increased terrorists' risks and in our burgeoning crime statistics. No wonder Donald Trump seems to have struck a chord with his stand on immigration. By the bye, since I am sure that our government has a pretty good handle on the number of legal immigrants there are in this country ... the number of illegal immigrants can easily be obtained from subtracting this figure from 42.1 million. I strongly suspect that it it far more than 11 or 12 million.

Total Recall

Do-good legislators all too often get ahead of the applied science ... possibly for personal financial gain? The bureaucratic bozos here in Massachusetts have recently decreed that any new home or re-construction requires a house-full of hard-wired interconnected smoke/carbon monoxide alarms. This means that if one goes off ... for whatever reason ... they all go off. Now I don't know if many of you have been woken up in the middle of the night with an ear-splitting FIRE! FIRE!, but our household has experienced it twice in the last three months ... and once during the day about five months ago. Of course the fire department is called and they find nothing irregular ... and you ... feeling like a real put-upon doofus ... have to remove all the suspected smoke detectors until you can figure out what really went wrong.

In our case the manufacturer, Kidde, first sent us two replacement detectors free of charge ... one of which then was the culprit in our most recent bout of sleeplessness. We now are awaiting the second round of free fixes. This replacement cycle also means that you are substantially without full fire-alarm coverage for some period of time ... unnerving to say the least.

Searching for solutions on the Internet, it appears our situation is not uncommon and is equally frustrating for quite a few new-construction homeowners. Talking to Kidde's customer service today, I was asked a number of questions by a skeptical agent and was then required to insert the battery so that she could hear the alarm go off. I was also told that small spiders or dust could upset the delicate mechanisms inside the detectors (made in China) and that they should be vacuumed or blown-out at least once a month. This is quite an inconvenience for a house with over ten smoke alarms. And what happens to those poor schlubs that have some detectors twenty feet up on vaulted ceilings? I think that a justified remedy would be for our Massachusetts state legislators to be assigned the task of doing this for us ... because they passed this silly law without any idea of the true consequences.

One last point, I have talked to our local fire department and they are, at the moment, unwilling to take the lead in fixing this issue ... either through technology, education, or pressure on the legislators and/or manufacturers. To me, this is feeling more and more like that famous General Motors ignition-switch recall that never happened ... until much serious damage and gnashing of teeth had already occurred. I think Kidde ... and possibly other makers ... need to step up and fix this problem before their liabilities soar out of sight.

Verklempt

I am verklempt ... how can the United States' national debt remain at slightly more than $18.1 trillion for 150 days? ... see: CNS News Story ... just under the official debt limit as established by Congress? And how can our treasury secretary, Jack Lew, say that it will remain so until the end of October? This assertion by the Obama administration that our official national debt has not increased for five months is beyond credibility.

This is clearly financial skulduggery. As such then how can we trust any of the "official" numbers that this Washington bunch of bunco bozos publishes ... unemployment rates, number of illegal immigrants, tax receipts, number of Ebola victims, Obama's vacation costs, etc.? I guess we need seriously to reassess our reliance on all the statistics that our government publishes ... an unnerving revelation.

Does anyone believe that the United States is not spending substantially more than it is taking in? Of course not. So how are these illusory numbers being manipulated at our Treasury Department? I herein offer the prize of a bagel with a schmear of chived cream cheese for the first person to unravel the smarmy secret behind this government financial slight of hand.

Infastructure Spending

The Keystone XL pipeline (blocked by President Obama) and the Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline into Massachusetts (blocked by Senator Elizabeth Warren) ... are these not both infrastructure projects that are also said to be so badly needed by the Democrats? Perhaps it is because their spending is privately funded as opposed to government projects?

Artificial Invagination

We are obviously in a race to embrace any and all possible hook-ups as a tribute to our worship of diversity. You know the drill ... same sex, multiple partners, siblings, transgenders, children, animals ... and now robots are or should eventually be considered to be valid candidates for holy matrimony ... see: Slate Story. Here we are not talking about blow-up bed mates ... but full service A.I. spouses capable of all the Kama Sutra positions (reread this blog's title).

When this does eventually happen ... and I' m sure it will ... will all the complications of married life also follow ... divorces, spousal batteries, trial separations, child custody battles, etc.? Speaking of children, I can see robot husbands producing issue with female humans, but will female automaton spouses also be full-functioning reproductive partners?

At that point in time, I can imagine that  the only act that might be considered illegal and a crime against nature would be the marriage of two robots.

Summer Haiku

Evening's blue shadows
Welcome the summer zephyrs
Banishing the heat

Outrage

Perhaps it's the explosive growth of social media that is causing a surge in outrageous comments made by the famous and the famous wanna-bes, but clearly we are in the midst of a frenetic fibrillation of popular discourse. We see outrage after outrage elbowing each other out of the way in order to garner the next day's headlines on the Drudge Report or the Daily Show. The old filters of what was acceptable behavior have virtually disappeared ... so a presidential candidate can dis a news anchor about her menstruation and get away with it. And the president of the United States, with impunity, can compare congressional leaders opposing his Iran nuclear treaty with those Muslim fanatics chanting, "Death to America."

Not long ago there was a cable television populist, Howard Stern, who pretty much started this death spiral into media banality. He felt he could say or do just about anything uncensored ... and thus achieved unprecedented popularity with millennials and the X-generation. Fortunately he is now relegated to satellite radio and as a judge on America's Got Talent. But now we are experiencing this sewage seeping into our political process with very few filters on what some candidates are willing to say or do. I sometimes feel that this country is in a race to the bottom propagated by a ratings war between the old-line media outlets and our newer means of communicating.

Apropos to this growing outrage, there is the poem, "If," written by Rudyard Kipling that should be required reading by anyone (including media anchors) who might be on the center stage in this upcoming election season:

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Or a Woman!

Wouldn't a return to cultural comity be a nice surprise?

Perhaps ...

... the way to counterbalance the existential threats posed by Iran's out-of-control and possibly certifiable leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, would be to elect an equally conniving egomaniacal tyrant as our new president here in the United States? Take your pick ... Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

The Candidates

In order to sift through the many candidates for President in 2016, I have been trying to reduce each of these aspirants to a few words. I realize that not all of you will agree, but then some might. Here goes:

Republicans
Donald Trump -- vainglorious

Jeb Bush -- establishmentarian

John Kasich -- Eagle Scout

Chris Christie -- straight shooter
Ted Cruz -- automaton

Rand Paul -- anger management issues

Rick Santorum -- goody two-shoes

Bobby Jindal -- right reason

Scott Walker -- proven by fire
Marco Rubio -- some questionable judgments

Carly Fiorina -- crisp communicator

Rick Perry -- Mr. Sincerity
Mike Huckabee -- bizarro Bill Clinton
George Pataki -- past his prime
Lindsey Graham -- chicken hawk
Ben Carson -- soft-spoken genius
Jim Gillmore -- forgettable

Democrats

Jim Webb -- caustic commentator

Hillary Clinton -- Queen Cruella
Bernie Sanders -- unrepentant hippie
Martin O'Malley -- typical pol

Lincoln Chafee -- soporific
(If announced) Joe Biden -- unfiltered thoughts

reddit Gallery CCCXVII

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Japanese Paradise Flycatcher and Baby

Clothespin Statue

The Edge of the World

Night Sky

Woman in a Field