]]>Nero enjoyed driving a one-horse chariot, singing to the lyre, and poetry. He even composed songs that were performed by other entertainers throughout the empire. At first, Nero only performed for a private audience.
In 64 A.D., Nero began singing in public in Neapolis in order to improve his popularity. He also sang at the second quinquennial Neronia in 65. It was said that Nero craved the attention, but historians also write that Nero was encouraged to sing and perform in public by the Senate, his inner circle and the people. Ancient historians strongly criticize his choice to perform, calling it shameful. (bold by ed.)
Regarding that little singing bit the president did recently. The Al Green thing. If you haven’t seen the clips of that then look it up. Easy to find. It’s been spread wide and far. And that was the plan. That moment was rehearsed to death. As in over and over and over again. Apparently the president has been complaining for some time that he’s no longer cool. He was actually in on a meeting with some of the Plouffe gang and told them more than once he wanted to be cool again. “Like in ’08. We were the sh-t back in 08″. Those are the president’s words. He is obsessed with getting back to being cool like in ’08. It’s become something of a theme apparently in-house among the younger staff. They have started to greet one another with “Are we cool again?” as a joke.
So anyway, back to that singing thing the president did. Told he practiced that little line for days. Seems likely that Obama spent more time on trying to sound good on that bit than he has on dealing with anything else facing the country. They brought in a voice coach. He was playing the song over and over again. It was a complete focus… (bold by ed.)
Above quote taken from a The Ulsterman Report post titled White House Insider: Obama Complains – I Wanna Be Cool Again! linked via Sondrakistan.
]]>Domestic Terrorist Violent Extremist Club of America Membership Qualifications/Specifications
Homeland Security Lexicon: You’re All ‘Militia Extremists’ Now
Via Glenn Reynolds
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Lest any individual consider the qualifications for inclusion in the Domestic Terrorist Violent Extremist Club of America as too exclusive, a more inclusive Enemies of America Club has been formed by Obama et al, as Victor Davis Hansen explains.
But there are new monsters in America, and I am starting to wonder whether I am to be considered among them: those of the uninvolved and uninformed lives, the bar-raisers, the downright mean ones, the never deserving of respect ones, the Vegas junketeers, the Super Bowl jet setters, the tuition stealers, the faux-Christians who do not pay higher taxes, the too much income makers, the tormenters of autistic children, the polluters, the enemies deserving of punishment, the targets to bring a gun against, the faces to get in front of, the limb-loppers, the tonsil pullers, the fat cats, the corporate jet owners, the one-percenters, the stupidly acting, the not paying their fair sharers, the discriminators on the “way you look”, the alligator raisers and moat builders, the vote deniers, the clingers, the typical something persons, the hunters of kids at ice cream parlors, the stereotypers and profilers, the cowards, the lazy and soft, the non-spreaders of money, the not my people people, the Tea party racists, the not been perfect and mistake makers, the disengaged and the dictating, the not the time to profiteers, the ones who did not know when to quit making money, and on and on.
Also linked via InstaPundit.
]]>I’d taken Mum’s encouragement and spent some time with Dad’s Bible the week after he died, but I recently asked Mum if I could borrow it again and did so. When I got home with it, I paged through it side by side with the Bible my folks had given me back in 1984, and while I noted similarities in the marginalia within Dad’s Bible and mine, Dad’s Bible seemed to me as a more authoritative, and well used, volume of study.
Dad’s Bible, a thirty-fifth anniversary gift lovingly inscribed to him by Mum with these words, Presented To: “My loving and faithful husband,” displays flashes of color; highlighter pink, yellow and green, ballpoint blue and black; and also contains a few particularly important to my Dad other writings, along with a card which states his name, Jerry (actual name is Gerard) means “Mighty Warrior,” though I’ve found that many name meaning sites state that the name Jerry means “One who rules with a spear,” though I’m certain my Dad would prefer the Hebrew meaning of Jerry, “May Jehovah exalt,” as I never saw my Dad with a spear in his hand, a paddle, well that’s a different story.
Many of the passages, or verses, highlighted by my Dad deal with contending with adversity in life, something he was quite too familiar with, health wise, and just as many highlighted passages and verses deal with God’s faithfulness to individuals of faith, messages which my Dad did not preach, but rather lived, which is best illustrated by the one and only biblical passage which Dad highlighted with a blue ballpoint star, yellow highlighter, and decisively underlined a portion of. Psalm 16, with the following verses receiving the aforementioned decisive underlining.
5 O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup;
You maintain my lot.
6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Yes, I have a good inheritance.
While it was somewhat of a melancholy and humbling exercise taking my Dad’s Bible in my hands once again, the beauty and example of Dad’s life evidenced within those pages exceeded the magnificance of the Book of Kells. Would that I had my Dad’s unfailing faith in the message contained in those two verses from Psalm 16.
]]>The NYT article is titled A Mortgage Tornado Warning, Unheeded and it opens with this bold statement.
YEARS before the housing bust — before all those home loans turned sour and millions of Americans faced foreclosure — a wealthy businessman in Florida set out to blow the whistle on the mortgage game. (bold by ed.)
Morgenson’s article goes on, at length, enumerating on Lavalle’s investigation (147 pages), and Fannie Mae’s seeming dismissal of Lavalle’s investigation, but the many words strung together by Morgenson all lead to the erroneous conculsion that if only the foreclosure filing irregularities discovered by Lavalle would have been judiciously addressed then the economic issues the world is contending with would not exist, and the dream of American homeownership would still be a dream worth having.
While there is no doubt what-so-ever that irregularities have occurred, and still do, in the mortgage foreclosure filing process, it is simple minded to conclude that the mortgage market meltdown, and the resulting worldwide financial mess, would have been averted if only Lavalle’s “mortgage tornado warning” would have been heeded. It’s a pleasing theory to distribute to the masses, but it’s akin to a William K. Black peddling of theoretical blame.
The collapse of the mortgage lending industry did not require the sounding of a tornado warning. The probability of the mortgage market collapse was clearly viewable as soon as one looked upon one single solitary subprime loan.
]]>The stage was set for the collapse of the subprime lending industry with the origination of the individual subprime loan underwritten to foolish; one could say incompetent; underwriting guidelines. As more and more of these structurally deficient loans piled up in lenders’ servicing portfolios, to be mined again and again for any remaining equity subprime borrowers may have retained in their homes, the swiftness of the final collapse lacks any astonishment. The subprime lending business model was fundamentally flawed and myopic.
No one I know has a job anymore. They’ve got Gigs.
Gigs: a bunch of free-floating projects, consultancies, and part-time bits and pieces they try and stitch together to make what they refer to wryly as “the Nut”—the sum that allows them to hang on to the apartment, the health-care policy, the baby sitter, and the school fees.
Gigs: They’re all that’s standing between them and…what? The outer-outer boroughs? Eating what’s left of the 401(k)? Moving to Alaska? Out-and-out destitution?
To people I know in the bottom income brackets, living paycheck to paycheck, the Gig Economy has been old news for years. What’s new is the way it’s hit the demographic that used to assume that a college degree from an elite school was the passport to job security.
Brown’s musing, I’m rather certain, is meant to elicit sympathetic clucks and nods of the head from readers. But not for the individuals in the bottom income brackets because, hey, they’re used to living paycheck to paycheck and the so-called “gig” economy, but rather for the college degreed individuals who were astute enough to attend college, but not astute enough to understand that borrowing fifty to one hundred thousand dollars for a degree in Leisure Studies was an unsound investment.
Should these college degreed “gig” workers receive sympathetic clucks and nods of the head? You decide.
Just as startling, these new alternative workers are not overwhelmingly low-income. They’re college-educated Americans who earn more than $75,000 a year.
I can think of myriads of individuals who are gig workers. My son, for instance, who is a 1099 worker in the financial industry. He does not get paid unless he sells, just like any other 100% commissioned worker. I, also, am a “gig” worker, who doesn’t make a penny unless I sell. There are many, many more which could be listed. Writers are gig workers, artists are gig workers, every small business owner is a “gig” worker.
Not all gigs are great gigs, of that there is no doubt, but if an individual at least has a gig or three which keeps a bit of change jingling in their pockets, they should at least be grateful enough to say themselves “I can gig it, man.”
]]>“You know why its called the black market? Because its in the black.”
A comment from fairwitness posted at Bill St. Clair’s place.
]]>
]]>]]>Ann,
You have stated that you are 35 years old and, from what I can tell, have no children. Just wondering what method of birth control is preferred by hypocrites like you.
Signed,
D
—————————————————————————-
Dear D,
Virginity.
Regards-
Ann
It’s the concerned people that I worry about. They’re never happy just standing around being concerned; they’re always getting all up in your business, trying to “help” and generally only succeeding in screwing things up even worse.
From Tam’s post News Flash.
]]>]]>“If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.”