Shinseki

This (from TPM) is true.

Let's remember that it was Shinseki, as Chief of Staff of the Army, who publicly stated in congressional testimony that the amount of resources the Bush administration was committing to the imminent invasion of Iraq was vastly less than would be required - largely in terms of the number of troops required to sustain any sort of occupation.

Paul Wolfowitz then publicly dismissed Shinseki's testimony and after that his influence and clout went into rapid decline. Whether the actual timing of his retirement was tied to this remains murky. But there's no doubt that this stand was basically a career-ender. And much of the history of the subsequent occupation of Iraq was a slow motion vindication of Shinseki's warnings.

The point isn't that Shinseki was right. A lot of people saw this at the time. And generally in our public life there's too much score-keeping of who was right or wrong about this or that thing that's already done and done with. To me the point is that he spoke up at real cost to himself.

None of that means he should get a pass for whatever happened under his management of the VA. But it shouldn't be forgotten either.

Two translation traps

Here are a couple of translations I've found in the Ukrainian-dubbed tv show Теорія брехні (Theory of Lies), or as it was originally titled, Lie to Me.

In this bit of dialog, a TSA agent stops the main character as he waits in the security line:

Як справи, сер?
Чудово.
Ви б не могли вийти за лінію?
Ви серйозно?
Так. У вас є причини хвилюватися, сер?
Боюсь спізнити на літак.
Я попрошу вас відкрити кейс.
Я краще сам подивлюся.

How are you, sir?
Just fine.
Could you step out of the line?
Are you serious?
Yes. Is there a reason you're nervous, sir?
I'm afraid of missing my plane.
I'm going to ask you to open your briefcase.
I'd better look at it myself.

Wait, what?

Now, I'm well aware that translators have to take into account cultural differences (hence, for instance, a reference to the US "Ministry of Defense"). And I also realize that translators for dubbed dialog have additional concerns - coming up with something that matches the original in duration and (as far as possible)(for some cultures) comes close to the lip movements of the speakers. But this line isn't a result of either of those. It just doesn't make sense.

I feel silly for not realizing what had happened. The original?

"I'd better check it."

Aha. Yes. "Check it" has two distinctly different meanings in English, and even seeing the character's attempt to take the briefcase away from the agent, the Ukrainian translator went for the more common one.

As translators we always have to ask why when things don't make sense. And we have to be ready to admit that the problem is probably with us.

Here's another one, just as classic:

Ви обоє і ваш син брешете. Слухайте сюди, троє людей можуть зберегти таємницю тільки якщо двоє з них мертві. Хочете розбурхати пекло?

Both of you, and your son, are lying. Listen here: three people can keep a secret only if two of them are dead. Do you want to rouse hell?

This one also seems obvious in retrospect, though I couldn't begin to figure it out before hearing the original: Do you want to wake the hell up?

Oops.

This trap is not recognizing an idiom.

While "wake up" has the standard alternation of a phrasal verb - "wake the man up" and "wake up the man" are both valid while "wake up him" is not - "wake the hell up" is not the same thing as "wake up the hell" (or rather "wake up hell"). In this case, "the hell" is not the direct object of "wake up". Instead, it's an adverbial, an intensifier, often seen in wh- questions (how the hell did this happen, who the hell are you, what the hell just happened) and, often with "out of", in commands (stand the hell up, sit the hell down, get the hell out of here, crank the hell out of that thing) and occasionally emphatic statements (I'm gonna break the hell loose, he edited the hell out of that article, she annoys the hell out of me).

So, "wake the hell up" is not розбурхати пекло. In fact, пекло, Hell, has no place in the sentence. A better translation would be відкрить очі!, open your eyes!

note: I tell these stories partly as a warning to translators and partly because they're funny, but always in the knowledge that I have done things that cracked Slavic speakers the hell up. 

Memorial Day

Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France

To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, 30 May 1916

I

Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When—with sweet flowers of our New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray—
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond their seas.
Those to preserve their country's greatness died;
But by the death of these
Something that we can look upon with pride
Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied
Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make
That from a war where Freedom was at stake
America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.

II

Be they remembered here with each reviving spring,
Not only that in May, when life is loveliest,
Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the disputed crest
Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering,
In that fine onslaught that no fire could halt,
Parted impetuous to their first assault;
But that they brought fresh hearts and springlike too
To that high mission, and 'tis meet to strew
With twigs of lilac and spring's earliest rose
The cenotaph of those
Who in the cause that history most endears
Fell in the sunny morn and flower of their young years.

III

Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise,
Nor to be mentioned in another breath
Than their blue-coated comrades whose great days
It was their pride to share—ay, share even to the death!
Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks
(Seeing they came for honour, not for gain),
Who, opening to them your glorious ranks,
Gave them that grand occasion to excel,
That chance to live the life most free from stain
And that rare privilege of dying well.

IV

O friends! I know not since that war began
From which no people nobly stands aloof
If in all moments we have given proof
Of virtues that were thought American.
I know not if in all things done and said
All has been well and good,
Or of each one of us can hold his head
As proudly as he should,
Or, from the pattern of those mighty dead
Whose shades our country venerates today,
If we 've not somewhat fallen and somewhat gone astray,
But you to whom our land's good name is dear,
If there be any here
Who wonder if her manhood be decreased,
Relaxed its sinews and its blood less red
Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed,
Be proud of these, have joy in this at least,
And cry: `Now heaven be praised
That in that hour that most imperilled her,
Menaced her liberty who foremost raised
Europe's bright flag of freedom, some there were
Who, not unmindful of the antique debt,
Came back the generous path of Lafayette;
And when of a most formidable foe
She checked each onset, arduous to stem—
Foiled and frustrated them—
On those red fields where blow with furious blow
Was countered, whether the gigantic fray
Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot,
Accents of ours were in the fierce mêlée;
And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground
Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires,
When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound,
And on the tangled wires
The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops,
Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: —
Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops;
Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours.'

V

There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness,
Their bayonets toward the beckoning frontiers,
They lie—our comrades—lie among their peers,
Clad in the glory of fallen warriors,
Grim clustered under thorny trellises,
Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores,
Leaves that made last year beautiful, still strewn
Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath the changing moon;
And earth in her divine indifference
Rolls on, and many paltry things and mean
Prate to be heard and caper to be seen.
But they are silent, clam; their eloquence
Is that incomparable attitude;
No human presences their witness are,
But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued,
And showers and night winds and the northern star
Nay, even our salutations seem profane,
Opposed to their Elysian quietude;
Our salutations calling from afar,
From our ignobler plane
And undistinction of our lesser parts:
Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts.
Double your glory is who perished thus,
For you have died for France and vindicated us.

-- Alan Seeger

The War Prayer

Because on Memorial Day we should remember why we have memorials, as well as those to whom they are raised.

("I have told the whole truth in that," Mark Twain said, "and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead.")

The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
1904


It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreams-visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! – then home from the war, bronzed heros, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation – "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!"

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was that an ever – merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory.

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting.

With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal,"Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said

"I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import – that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause)

"Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

"this evil symbol of the devil"

From Wikipedia (my italics):

The Welsh Dragon – Welsh: Y Ddraig Goch ("the red dragon") pronounced [ə ˈðraiɡ ˈɡoːχ] – appears on the national flag of Wales. The flag is also called Y Ddraig Goch. The oldest recorded use of the dragon to symbolise Wales is in the Historia Brittonum, written around AD 829, but it is popularly supposed to have been the battle standard of King Arthur and other ancient Celtic leaders. Its association with these leaders along with other evidence from archaeology, literature, and documentary history lead many to suppose that it evolved from an earlier Romano-British national symbol. During the reigns of the Tudor monarchs, the red dragon was used as a supporter in the English Crown's coat of arms (one of two supporters, along with the traditional English lion). The red dragon is often seen as symbolising all things Welsh, and is used by many public and private institutions. These include the Welsh Government, Visit Wales, and numerous local authorities including Blaenau Gwent, Cardiff, Carmarthenshire, Newport, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Swansea, and sports bodies, including the Sport Wales National Centre, the Football Association of Wales, Cardiff City F.C., Newport Gwent Dragons, and London Welsh RFC.

But now the Welsh Christian Party ("proclaiming Christ's Lordship") have decided Y Ddraig Goch is Satan himself:

"We will not allow this evil symbol of the devil to reign over Wales for another moment. Wales is the only country in history to have a red dragon on its national flag. This is the very symbol of the devil described in The Book of Revelation 12:3. This is nothing less than the sign of Satan, the devil, Lucifer that ancient serpent who deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. No other nation has had this red dragon as its ruling symbol. Wales has been under demonic oppression and under many curses because of this unwise choice."

The reverend goes on to add, with ludicrous falsity: "This symbol was only introduced in 1959 and is not the historic symbol of Wales."

Of course, what they "will not allow" and what they can actually do are rather different things. They have - dun dun DUN - a petition.

Fortunately, not all Welsh Christians are against the ancient symbol:

Bishop David Yeoman said few Christians in Wales would associate the dragon with the devil.

He said, "The dragon is a very ancient symbol in Wales. I don't think Christians see it as demonic. They see it as a symbol of the past."

The revered (rather than reverend) Welsh historian John Davies said: "It's been part of our tradition for more than 1,500 years. On the other hand the flag of St David has a much more specific remit."

ps: here is the St David's flag, another boring cross. Looks like part of Scandinavia...

  

ps - while image searching for St David's flag I found this proposed replacement:

Try not to be so ... stupid

In my spam filter today:

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Heya, is "wordpress" in my url? No. "Blogspot" is. Also, looks like you've got a blog already... or something, not that I'm going to go to it.

Bandits? Not quite

The Ekho Moskvy journalist Grigory Revzin, one-time commissioner of the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, has been fired by the Ministry of Culture. With no reason given, at least Revzin says he hasn't been given one, though he intimated on Facebook that it was because of his stand of Crimea.

That stand is resolutely anti. And it was expressed in a blog post at EM called Ужас обмана, The Horror of Deceit, published by Ekho Moskvy. One of the passages in it has been quoted around the Internet:

Можно сколько угодно делать вид, что все думающие украинцы – это бандеровцы, фашисты, антисемиты и русофобы, но это же чушь, и мы знаем, что это чушь. Миллион человек, который выходил в Киеве против путинских законов Януковича – это что, бандеровцы? Ну вы кого хотите обмануть? Себя?

I'm seeing that translated as:

“One may pretend that all thinking Ukrainians are bandits, fascists, anti-Semites and Russophobes, but this is all utter nonsense, and we know that it’s nonsense. A million people come out on the streets of Ukraine against Yanukovich’s Putinist laws, and who are they? Bandits? Who are you trying to fool? Yourselves?”

But "bandits" is бандиты, bandity. This is бандеровцы, banderovtsy - Banderists, followers of Stepan Bandera, the WWII-era Ukrainian nationalist leader. It's a very different accusation.

Doubly unfortunate

First, it's very sad that acclaimed DC actor Frank Britton was assaulted at the Silver Spring Metro and is in the hospital.

But this is really sad:

Members of the D.C. theater community have started a GoFundMe page to help offset his medical expenses.

Nobody should need to crowdsource his medical bills. Nobody.

(What's not sad is that the goal has been well and truly exceeded.)

One Big Difference

"One difference between the rich and the poor is this: The rich want more money so that they can get more stuff; the poor want more money so that they don’t lose everything they have. The former can correctly be called greed, but that doesn’t seem like an accurate word for the poor person’s desperation for some respite from the reasonable fear that, at any moment, powerful creditors may take away everything they need to live."

Hat tip, of course, Slacktivist

Pet pigeon

Just a thought about this KidsPost story, Pet pigeon leaves home and heads to school:

The pet bird named Foresta had disappeared last Tuesday from Tara’s home near Montana City, but it was back in her arms Wednesday after it showed up at her school five miles away.

The bird caused a ruckus when it arrived at Central-Linc Elementary, first sitting on teacher Rob Freistadt’s head. Staff members and a police officer tried for an hour to corral the bird, which Principal Vanessa Nasset said was “sky-bombing everyone.”

Nasset asked Tara for help after a parent remembered she had a pet pigeon. Tara recognized Foresta by her distinct coloration and the blue band around her leg.

“I was pretty happy,” Tara said.

Tara tried to catch Foresta, but classmate Owen Cleary finally succeeded by putting a blanket on the bird while it sat on his head.

Granted that being chased for an hour probably excited the bird, but something you have to catch by throwing a blanket over it is not really a "pet".

Poison, and we're drinking it

Depressing but valuable read. For everyone.

That’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows.

Except this: The difference between the movie theater jackass and the murderer is a difference of degree. Oh, there are also discrepancies in circumstances and specifics—including, quite likely, psychological profile. But both incidents crawled from the same stinking pit: a man’s instinct to unleash fury on a woman who doesn’t give him what he wants. And when we excuse or condone or even applaud the everyday offgassings of that gaping hole in our cultural decency, it’s no surprise that it sometimes erupts.

Depressing but valuable read. For everyone.

Did she see the movie?

Category: Title Movie Characters
Clue: In 1984, in the first of the films featuring this character, he only has 21 lines, for a total of 133 words.

One contestant wrote nothing (which I would have done). The next wrote the correct answer - the Terminator - at which I kicked myself.

The champion, who couldn't be caught and whose hefty wager wasn't enough to make her lose, wrote ... Indiana Jones.

Indiana Jones? 133 words? 133 thousand maybe. Indy's chatty and the movie's long. Wow.

I don't know if she thought it was right or was just flailing around for a movie franchise named for a character that started in 1984 - which, by the way, was not Indiana Jones on either count; the first film was in 1981 and it was named Raiders of the Lost Ark, not Indiana Jones and ..., which came with the release of the VHS box set - but that one would never have crossed my mind, though I might have stumbled on the exact year of its release. 21 lines... I think he has more that 21 lines in the Amazon bit at the beginning of the movie!

Photo 17

Wow. Just found some photos of the Ukrainian election - here are a few. The first two are a soldier and his daughter in Lviv and a family in Kyiv.





This one - a polling place in a town called Kodra, near Kyiv - is honestly kind of creepy. A little bit like a lot of pictures you can see here on voting day, toy gun and all. For the old USSR seal, just imagine a Confederate battle flag...




That last one? Number 17 in the gallery? A guy in jail, life sentence, voting.



Felony disenfranchisement is part of the way we destroy participatory democracy in this country, in my opinion. Voting from jail may be too far in the other direction (though a couple of states allow it), but it beats losing the right forever - especially in a country where incarceration rates vary so wildly by factors unrelated to the actual crime.

In case you haven't read it yet

Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Case For Reparations.

"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to compete with all the others, and still just believe that you have been completely fair." LBJ, 1965

"Color blindness isn't the answer. Color isn't the problem. Racism is the problem." Ta-Nehisi Coates on Moyers & Company; Bill pointed out that redlining decided where blacks could live, which decided what schools their children went to, which led to the fact that today the most segregated school systems are in New York City, and other Northern cities.

From the article:

From the White House on down, the myth holds that fatherhood is the great antidote to all that ails black people. But Billy Brooks Jr. had a father. Trayvon Martin had a father. Jordan Davis had a father. Adhering to middle-class norms has never shielded black people from plunder. Adhering to middle-class norms is what made Ethel Weatherspoon a lucrative target for rapacious speculators. Contract sellers did not target the very poor. They targeted black people who had worked hard enough to save a down payment and dreamed of the emblem of American citizenship—homeownership. It was not a tangle of pathology that put a target on Clyde Ross’s back. It was not a culture of poverty that singled out Mattie Lewis for “the thrill of the chase and the kill.” Some black people always will be twice as good. But they generally find white predation to be thrice as fast.

And

An honest assessment of America’s relationship to the black family reveals the country to be not its nurturer but its destroyer.

And this destruction did not end with slavery. Discriminatory laws joined the equal burden of citizenship to unequal distribution of its bounty. These laws reached their apex in the mid-20th century, when the federal government—through housing policies—engineered the wealth gap, which remains with us to this day. When we think of white supremacy, we picture Colored Only signs, but we should picture pirate flags.

On some level, we have always grasped this.

“Negro poverty is not white poverty,” President Johnson said in his historic civil-rights speech.

Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences—deep, corrosive, obstinate differences—radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.

We invoke the words of Jefferson and Lincoln because they say something about our legacy and our traditions. We do this because we recognize our links to the past—at least when they flatter us. But black history does not flatter American democracy; it chastens it. The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter. Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge—that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it.

And so we must imagine a new country. Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is—the work of fallible humans.

Obviously, I'm recommending it.

Memorial Day (observed)

Dirge for Two Veterans
        Walt Whitman

1

    THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath,
On the pavement here—and there beyond, it is looking,
    Down a new-made double grave.

2

    Lo! the moon ascending!
Up from the east, the silvery round moon;
Beautiful over the house tops, ghastly phantom moon;
    Immense and silent moon.

3

    I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key’d bugles;
All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding,
    As with voices and with tears.

4

    I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring;
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
    Strikes me through and through.

5

    For the son is brought with the father;
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;
Two veterans, son and father, dropt together,
    And the double grave awaits them.

6

    Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive;
And the day-light o’er the pavement quite has faded,
    And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

7

    In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin’d;
(’Tis some mother’s large, transparent face,
    In heaven brighter growing.)

8

    O strong dead-march, you please me!
O moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial!
    What I have I also give you.

9

    The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music;
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
    My heart gives you love.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Monuments Men, which I found suspenseful and tense and absorbing.

DVD: Father Brown, the 1974 series with Kenneth More. Unlike the 2013 Mark Williams series (which I finished the first season of, and which is goofily entertaining), these attempted to actually adapt Chesterton for tv. Fr Brown sounds like a priest. Also, in the 2013 series, he's got a parish and a horrible stereotypical Irish housekeeper and a rival cop and a streetwise assistant... in short, he's just another amateur sleuth. Kenneth More's Fr Brown is altogether more serious, and altogether delectable (although one of the episodes is missing its last section, alas).

TV: Cosmos, the episode where NdGT explains electricity - and sent creationists into a frenzy. Again. I have to admit I got a bit teary at the end, when James Clerk Maxwell's book comes into Michael Faraday's hands... And then the next episode, also good. Caught up on Modern Family, including Cam and Mitchell's wonderful, disaster-plagued wedding.

Read: The Bill of the Century, about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is altogether enthralling. I'm almost done with it - the great filibuster is about to begin. (Reading this book is definitely both disturbing in the memories it awakens, and disquieting in the echoes of today.) Also a couple of shorts courtesy of "Athena's Daughters" - Janine Spendlove's "Birth of Anarchy" and "He Was A Marvelous Man" - excellent.

The world they crave

George Will's latest column, so called, inspired this from David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

Some days I fantasize about giving men like George Will the world they so desperately crave--after stripping them of their wealth and privilege, and setting them up a coal mining town where they can prove their worth with the sweat of their brow without any bothersome government official interfering in the sacred relationship between them and their new employer.

Me, too.

It seems obvious

In an article a column at al Jazeera America, David Cay Johnston notes something that really seems obvious when you stop to think about it (italics mine).

Higher pay increases what economists call aggregate demand — the collective capacity to buy goods and services. When people make more, they have more to spend, not just on the rent but also on everything else, and they have time for both sleep and nurturing their children.

In contrast, when all the gains are concentrated in a few hands, as the economic data show since the Great Recession ended in 2009, piling on more does not help the economy grow in the face of low aggregate demand. People like Howard Schultz [the founder and CEO of Starbucks who last year earned $9,600 an hour], who already can consume virtually anything at any price, cannot consume more — they can only invest more. But without demand for goods and services there is little demand for new investment, creating a vicious cycle of widening inequality instead of a virtuous one of growing prosperity.

The rest of the column is discussing Seattle and Washington state (hence the use of Schultz), and is worth the few minutes it will take you to read it.

Conyers can run

A Federal judge has put Rep. John Conyers back on the ballot, after his campaign appealed the possible unconstitutionality of the requirements:

Hundreds of signatures the Conyers campaign had gathered for the Aug. 5 primary had been ruled invalid by the county clerk and secretary of state after a challenge by the Rev. Horace Sheffield, Conyers's primary opponent, on the grounds they were not collected by registered voters. Hundreds more signatures were separately rejected.

Sheffield’s campaign successfully argued that three of Conyers’s petition-gatherers weren’t registered voters at the time they were collecting signatures.

Of course some people are yelping about double standards, because another Michigander, Republican Thaddeus McCotter, wasn't allowed to run last time over "signature issues". Sounds like a fair complaint until you realize McCotter was thrown off the ballot after several of his nominating petitions were found to be faked. Conyers' petitions were genuine, just collected by people who weren't supposed to be collecting them. Not quite the same thing.

And frankly, I can't see any good purpose to requiring that only people registered to vote in that district can collect signatures. I suppose it's to prevent "foreigners" from having an influence on the election... though pounding the pavement to get signatures seems a lot less dangerous than pouring money into another district - or state - election, doesn't it?

Say what?

This is what makes Family Feud such a weird game. The question (in the final) is "If you could eat one food for the rest of  your life, what would it be?" The contestant said "turnip greens".

Steve Harvey just about went crazy laughing at that answer, but then ... 7 people had said it.

This week

The New York Times notes today (my emphasis):

It will take a Supreme Court ruling to make marriage equality the law of the land.

But with this week’s developments, 44 percent of Americans now live in a place where same-sex marriage is allowed, up from 16 percent less than 18 months ago.

With the focus on number of states (18 where it's legal, 7 more judges have struck down their bans, and 3 more than have been told they must recognize out-of-state marriages) it's easy to lose track of the people. From 16% to 44%, in a year and a half.

That's progress. And it's heartening.

Font choice

I'm reading Clay Risen's The Bill of the Century, which is fascinating stuff. But the e-book version of it that I'm reading on my phone has a weird display issue. It happens when they quote headlines:



It's particularly tricky when there's no punctuation, as in "while the Chicago Tribune blasted its criticism of his performance with the headline ease house rights bill, bob kennedy asks: attorney general says measure goes too far, the New York Times took the administration's side, declaring, robert kennedy tries to prevent gridlock". That one requires very careful reading indeed!

I'm sure they use small caps in the print version, with no upper-case letters. So when the e-version converts it all to the same typeface, it just comes out in all lower case, and it's very weird reading.

Clyde is RIGHT

Lemont of Candorville is one of the more complicated characters in the comics. Sometimes he's just a total PITA, like when he walks around correcting the grammar of total strangers. But today he's really crossed the line:

People who just let their phones ring and ring and ring on the bus or the train are so much more annoying than any conversation on one could ever be - no matter what the ringtone may be. If you're not gonna bother answering it, mute it!

plus ça change...

I'm reading Carl Risen's excellent book on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Bill of the Century. Revisiting the worst parts of the country of my childhood, I can't help feeling that there are a lot of people out there - politicians and non alike - my age or a little older who are really feeling nostalgic for what the rest of us see as the shame of the 1950s and early 1960s - like being able to beat the shit out of people while the police looked out smiling. Perhaps the identity of those you could beat up has changed, though I'm not sure of that, but the desire is still there, simmering under the surface.

I hit this quote today - it's from a speech by JFK on July 9, 1963. The "public accommodations section" was that section that required business owners to serve blacks - bake cakes for their weddings, so to speak, though "cut their hair" and "let them sit at lunch counters" were the poster children of the day. Kennedy said:

"Even though the public accommodations section is causing controversy, it is clear to most Americans that when the basic constitutional rights of an individual to be treated as a free and equal human being come into conflict with the preferences of those who operate public accommodations, then the elementary rights to equal citizenship and equal treatment must prevail."

Looking at the multitude of those arguing for their right to discriminate, I'm not sure this is any truer now than it was then. I just hope it's as true - true enough to change the laws.

That's not the issue

A pastor in Houston was testifying in favor of letting the now-iconic sensitive Christian cakemaker refuse to make cakes for gender or gay people. She's called on it by a Jewish council member, who asks her if people could refuse to serve women or seniors or Jews. Her cognitive dissonance is a thing of wonder.

No, no, of course not, only people who bother them religiously.
Like Jews?
No, no of course not, I don't have any problem with that - but that's not the issue. They have the right to refuse service if it goes against their religious belief. 
So you're saying someone has the right to refuse me service as someone of the Jewish faith?

"No, no I'm not saying that, well, yes, (laughs nervously) I am saying that, but that's not the issue we're talking about."

Yeah. Not yet.

 

Quoters beware

Here's a nice little article about quote websites and their bogus attributions. This is lovely:

W.B. Yeats has come into posthumous possession of this similarly catchy assertion: “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” (Being Irish myself, I know a Yeats line when I see one, and this feels deeply un-Yeatsian to me. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t turn up in any of his actual published work, it would probably be more comfortably housed within the quotational estate of an Oscar Wilde, or an H.L. Mencken. Yeats was a lot of things, but he wasn’t much of a wisecracker.)

Living like a Christian IS illegal in Daytona Beach

Via (of course) Fred at Slactivist, it turns out that some places in the US it is a crime to "live like a Christian" (this last paragraph is a classic):

You can be “fined for being a Christian” in Daytona Beach. “Living, behaving as a Christian … has now become a crime” in that Florida resort town. But that’s mainly because it seems that Daytona Beach’s police chief, Mike Chitwood, is a right-wing idiot who thinks that many homeless people “are homeless by choice” because they are “bank robbers.”

Daytona Beach isn’t saying, “Hey, great, you’re feeding hungry people. But let’s make sure you’re doing this in a way that doesn’t create chaos or prevent others from enjoying public spaces.” Daytona Beach is saying, “You’re feeding hungry people. That’s creating ‘dependency’ and it must stop.” That’s hogwash.

You’d think Debbie and Chico Jimenez would have become a cause célèbre for the religious right fundraisers who claim to be so concerned about “religious liberty.” But it seems that “religious liberty” is only for billionaire CEOs who want to deny health insurance for women, not for those who would celebrate a love feast by going out into the streets and lanes of the town and bringing in the poor. The difference, of course, is that the former is prohibited by scripture, while the latter is commanded by it.

This is going to kill our country

Another guy is leaving my agency because the minimum payment on his student loan is 20% of his net income. That's insane.

He notes, too, that his loan was "sold, transferred, and everything else three times while [he] was completing school [so he] did not even know who was servicing them until they came due. It wasn't until the bills came that [he] knew what [he] was up against."

Student debt has become crippling for many and disincentivizing for many more. Dammit. Elizabeth Warren is right.

The King of...

Seriously? I thought. "The only improvable property in Monopoly without Avenue or Place in its name" is a Final Jeopardy question?

But I guess it wasn't as obvious as I thought. We had a Boardwalk and Park Place from one contestant (the champ, in fact, though she was far enough ahead to still squeak out a win), and a Boardwalk and ??? from another (the eventual second-place finisher). Only the distant third got it right.

They just keep coming

I've never been so happy to be wrong.

One more state has its marriage ban struck down. The judge ruled against NOM's last-minute motion, filed after Democratic Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, Gov. John Kitzhaber, State Registrar Jennifer Woodward, and the Center for Health Statistics and Multnomah County Assessor Randy Waldruff all refused to defend the ban - meaning that marriage equality in Oregon begins this week.

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Endeavour, the whole second season (series), because I have no selfcontrol (and it's only four episodes, 'cause it's British). It's not their fault I'm a little tired of the whole secret-society-villain trope (blame The Mentalist for that), but I am. Still, what a hell of an ending. Also, three more episodes of the BBC's Father Brown - I still think they're well done, but they really go wildly off the original - the Eye of Apollo one, for instance.

TV: The Mentalist - caught up. Loved the end to the three-ep trafficking arc. And so Lisbon is leaving. It's good for her; I wonder how it will be for the show. If she really does leave. Good Grimm, too. And another excellent Cosmos.

Read:No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald's latest. I found the final chapter, on the state of journalism, to be the best. Mary Robinette Kowal's Regency Glamourist novels. I enjoy them very much, though Jane sometimes infuriates me (she's of her time!).

Meme, meet МЕМ

In an attempt to shift the blame for the violence in Slov'yansk away from Russian provocateurs, Russian-backed LifeNews television announced that they had found the business card of Ukrainian right-wing politician Dmytro Yarosh on the scene ... in a burnt-out car.

The notion of this indestructible vizitka (business card) has gone viral. Here are a couple of my favorites, one that don't need translation and one that does - or does it?

(Okay, maybe it does: One does not simply burn Yarosh's business card)

I called it (but it could have been really close)

I can't believe Ken didn't know Rice. Albright was definitely married. Wow.

And I didn't know Buchanan, but that's the kind of thing they should know! It's THEM. Lists of unmarried famous US politicians are the kind of thing they have memorized!

And Roger - another true daily double lost, but it was going to be really hard for him to overcome his deficit otherwise, so he really had no choice.

And so, once again, Brad Rutter wins, and adds a million to maintain his "biggest money-winner ever" title.

Congrats, guys.

Whoa

First - Roger was really moving there for a while. Then he went big and bet it all on the Daily Double, hoping for a huge lead over the two killers he's playing - and lost it all, instead. And then ended with $0 and couldn't play the Final.

Then neither Ken nor Brad knew the Final. (Fair notice: I did not, either.) So tomorrow's game will be way closer than it might have.

BUT ... seriously? "Medical term for swelling caused by fluid"  was the Daily Double ... that Roger couldn't remember? Edema?

Wow. This tournament isn't going exactly as I'd pictured it.

O.M.G. Nailed it.

Watch this video to put Michael Sam squarely in the NFL context. Seriously. Watch it.

Oh happy day

I've asked this before, but why have a blog if you can't repeat yourself now and then?

Here's a picture from a blog at the Arkansas Times. It's of the Rev. Wendell Griffen of New Millennium Baptist Church, performing one of many same-sex marriages in Little Rock Monday. Please take careful note of that. Reverend Griffen. New Millenium Baptist Church.

All we ever hear about is the religious freedom of people who don't want gays to be able to marry. What about the freedom of those who do?

PS - via (of course) Fred at Slacktivist, this pointer to a wonderful tale of that Monday, featuring Rev. Griffen. And some wonderful photos from the New Civil Rights Movement's site.

And it's no surprise

So, my (really daring) prediction: the big Jeopardy! tournament will be Brad vs Ken, with whoever was lucky enough to draw the third semifinal match finishing third. Ken could get lucky, but I think Brad will probably win ... again. Say 7/4 on Brad.

Outside of the elephants

This is one of the more intriguing opening sentences of spam I've gotten in a long time. Although it quickly turned into a Ralph Lauren polo shirts ad, it began:

At least outside of the elephants he travels with and takes through the streets of London.

First world? Sure. But still annoying as all get out

So, my debit card has stopped working in machines. The bank is happy to send me a replacement (for a $5, of course), but it will have a new expiration date.

Which means - since it's my debit card - that I now have a bunch of people to contact for those monthly automatic payments.

I do not understand why they can't use the same flippin'  expiration date. I just don't.

Really?

 Seriously? That big champ didn't know the "now controversial" Kipling phrase "white man's burden"?

Wow.

Gay or not

Derrick Ward tweeted: “I’m fine with it being a new day in age but for him to do that on […] national tv is disgusting. Gay or not,” Ward added with a follow-up tweet.

First off? No, you're not "fine with it" or you wouldn't follow up with "but". You do realize that the whole point of the new day and age, the whole point of him being out, is that he can have his boyfriend in the room with the cameras, and then when he gets the great, life-changing news, kiss him right then and there instead of hiding his heart away from the rest of his life? Actually, no you don't. You want him to be the Token Gay Friend who never dates, am I right? You know I am. That "but" says it all.

Second? Unless you tweeted your disgust at every straight player's kissing his girlfriend, "Gay or not" is not remotely true.

ps: this? really quite ordinary PDA. Not even close to "get a room" territory. Kind of sweet, actually...

The Week in Entertainment

Live: Peter and the Starcatcher at the Hippodrome. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but this wasn't it ... which isn't to say I didn't love it, because I did. It was marvelous - funny as all get out and extremely well acted. Nabucco at the Lyric. This opera is a bit problematic if you think about it too much, but omg was this a fabulous cast. The young tenor Ta'u Pupu'a (who used to play football for the Ravens, in fact) was splendid - give him a couple more years to get his voice really in shape and he'll be dominating bel canto roles. But Francesca Mondanaro doesn't need any more time to be brilliant; her Abigaille ran this production, even more than Michael Chiolde's title role. The projections were ... iffy; showing us the Holocaust during Va pensiero didn't work (for me, anyway - one woman afterward said she'd cried). But overall it was a strongly sung production, and that's all Verdi ever needs.

Read: My Complete Cul de Sac came and I started in on that. (I never saw the earliest years in the papers.) The Cecy and Kate trilogy by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, Regency + magic in epistolary format, lots of fun. The Chronicles of Joe Muller, an odd but engaging collection of short stories about a detective in the Austro-Hungarian Empire's police force. Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome, a novella by John Scalzi that accompanies his upcoming new novel Lock In. And then because it was there, I reread Agent to the Stars, the very first Scalzi book I ever read. He's made a few little tweaks for the Kindle version, but it's the same story that hooked me in. Good thing the next I read was The Android's Dream, because that's when I knew this guy's books were going to be different.

One more!

So, in December I said that 2013's astonishing gains in marriage equality wouldn't be repeated. But - thankfully - I seem to have been wrong. The defeat of DOMA did what Scalia warned it would: made marriage bans indefensible. One state after another is having them struck down. Utah, Virginia, and now Arkansas.

Yes, it'll be appealed, and the marriages that will take place next week will be the only ones for a while.

But the tide, as they say, has most definitely turned.

Relationship with whom, again?

The ad says: To begin a relationship with Jesus Christ, call 1-877-772-XXXX

Ummm. I do believe that if you call that number, you'll end up in a relationship with "the Billy Graham Team".

And especially nowadays, that's not exactly the same thing.

A couple of very good questions

The recent Georgia legislation (the "Safe Carry Protection Act", don't you love it? Carrying is protected. People aren't) makes it legal to carry guns pretty much anyplace in the state, including school zones and - you have just got to wonder - bars.

The Safe Carry Protection Act of 2014, which goes into effect July 1, allows Georgia residents with concealed carry permits to bring guns into churches that give express permission, while lowering the fine for bringing a gun into a place of worship to $100. It permits guns in bars, school zones, government buildings and certain areas inside airports. It says the state no longer has to fingerprint law-abiding gun owners to renew their licenses, and that dealers won’t be required to keep sales records for state purposes (federal government record-keeping laws still apply).

But one of the few places you can't carry a gun is the lege.

A commenter at Fred's Slacktivist asks:

In case anyone thought I was joking, I wasn't. If Georgia legislators think it should be legal to wave a gun at somebody's child at a baseball field, why don't they think it's also fine and dandy for people to visit their workplace and wave guns at them?

Could it be that they actually think it's dangerous? Could it be that they are colossal hypocrites, who are happy to curry favor and votes with the gun lobby while other people die, but who demur at exposing themselves to equal risk? Why is that?

I think this is a question everybody should be asking politicians who vote for shit like this. That should be the challenge. Why are you exempt from all this? Where's your commitment to gun rights when the gun is in the same room as you?

All very good questions and worthy of answers.

They need 18 to win

Omg. This guy got 182 points on Family Feud... and his daughter got 0. 

I don't think I've ever seen someone get no points at all.

So, wait...

From the Daily Kos gun roundup, this odd story:

PONTOTOC, MS, 4/19/14: The Mississippi Highway Patrol says a man accidentally shot himself at a traffic safety checkpoint in Pontotoc County over the weekend. Authorities say troopers had set up a roadblock on Highway 342 at the Valley Road intersection around 6:30 p.m Saturday night. They say the man had a firearm stuck down next to the seat of the car and attempted to push it farther down when it discharged. The bullet went through the man's arm, hit the side of his face and exited through his ear. No charges have been filed in connection with the incident, which remains under investigation.

So he had the gun down beside his seat in case someone tried to carjack him or something? Okay, apparently either that's not legal in Mississippi - though since no charges have been filed it probably is - or else he thought it wasn't or maybe it's not his gun ... or maybe he had some nefarious reason for having it with him instead of for self-defense. But even if it was for self-defense ... Goober! What the hell are you doing tucking it beside your seat barrel up??!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Several episodes of Father Brown, a BBC adaptation,  well done and quite entertaining.

TV: I'm not sure that I know where The Mentalist is going - Lisbon leaving? The show relocating to DC from Texas? Pike (like Van Pelt's boyfriend) being yet another sleeper bad guy? Or pushing Lisbon and Jane into a relationship, which could go badly. This was a good episode, though - lots of nice little bits, especially Cho-related ones. Caught up on The Crazy Ones, a couple of good, funny episodes. Zach and Dylan in the museum cracked me up. And apparently they aren't making Sydney and Andrew a couple, or at least not at the moment.Interesting choice. Modern Family - caught up. I laughed out loud at Lily saying "I have enough regrets."And the kangaroo punching Phil - hilarious - and the dingo stealing Claire's baby (laptop). And in the other one, "I knew what it wasn't, I just wasn't sure what it was" followed by the lawyer fake. And Stella on the skateboard. Grimm  - okaaaay. They didn't tell Adelind. That will cause problems - though of course telling her would have been a really awful idea, too. There were no good ways out. And of course Cosmos.

Read: Reread Peter Robinson's In A Dry Season, one of my favorites by him. A couple of Georgette Heyer's Regencies, in Russian. Also a couple of them in English. Ordeal by Innocence, one of my favorite Christies (sparked by watching the French version of it). A delightful book called NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette which uses drawings (gifs if you get the animated version) to point out various things about being in New York - like, for instance, where not to stop and read the map you do  have to have, or how not to kill cyclists by opening your door in the bike lane. Funny and helpful.

Bad news all around

From Fred at Slacktivist:

The next story on the news last night was that I won’t be getting a raise any time soon. The Republican minority in the U.S. Senate prevented a vote on the matter because preventing votes is their idea of democracy and because screwing over workers is their idea of celebrating May Day.

That’s bad news for me because the proposed new federal minimum wage of $10.10/hour is more than my employer is paying me now. And it’s disastrous news for my employer — a massive chain of home-improvement stores — because tens of millions of their customers also won’t be getting a raise. Those would-be customers thus will keep deferring those home-improvement projects they’ve always wanted to get to some day, and instead of selling them all the things they need for those projects, we’ll just sell them another roll of duct-tape. (The smaller, $2.70 roll, not the giant, $8.28 roll. That’s for rich people like U.S. senators — you think I’m made of money?)

This is an important point. Big companies can't sell stuff to poor people. And if they can't sell stuff, they won't make stuff. And if they can't sell and won't make, well then, they don't need to have so many people working for them. And if people aren't working, they aren't buying. And if they aren't buying...

As a friend of mine once said:

The private sector will not create jobs before the demand for goods and services is there. It doesn't matter how much surplus cash they have or how many tax breaks they're given. The private sector is not in the business of providing charity. They won't create jobs for workers to produce and sell what people are not buying. That's not how a free-market economy works.

May Day in Two Worlds

Okay, technically, May second, but still ... what a lovely example this is:

Times
 Accountability Federal inquirers say work is being stymied | Peace Corps act won't help
Libya Benghazi could turn into criminal investigation | Key talking points email held despite subpoena
Military Intel system: Army 'lesson' not put to use
Maryland Horses for healing | Derby Day gives community a chance to help the needy
Foreign Relations Space program perils feared with Russia rift | NASA chief tries to assure lawmakers
Presidency No man for old country | Predecessors found favorite retreat at Camp David

there are three photos with the Camp David story - a big one of Obama and Sasha at the swimming pool, and smaller ones of Reagan and Bush riding horses and Clinton and James Hunt jogging

Interesting here is trying to spin Benghaziiii!!!!!!!!! into a story about "Libya", calling the disabled (mostly children) "the needy", and the whole "Obama's urban" (meaning, of course, not a regular guy for, you know, reasons). (Also the wrong verb in the NASA story - he's trying to reassure them that the program will survive.)

Post
Big tech firms defy U.S. data demands  Practice of quiet compliance ends | Users to be notified about seizures of information
McAuliffe weighs power on Medicaid expansion Governor explores whether he can act alone and bypass legislature
A paratrooper, then and now Two years after he became an amputee, Joshua Pitcher has reached the destination of his road to recovery: Another tour of duty in Afghanistan
Low-key Democratic senator in high-stakes reelection race
Ukrainian riot police retreat under attack by separatist mob 

the big picture is of Lt. Pitcher in Samangan Province; there's a smaller one of a train wreck in Bowie, Maryland

Quick quiz re National Day of Prayer

Here's a quick quiz from Fred at Slacktivist:

In 1952, Congress passed a law establishing the National Day of Prayer as an annual religious observance.

Quick: give me another sentence that uses the words “Congress,” “law,” “establish” and “religion.”

Yes, I’m thinking of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

So today is either a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, or else it’s a meaningless ceremony void of any specific religious significance, invoking God and prayer and religion as purely symbolic gestures to distinguish ourselves from those godless Soviets.

I’ll let you decide which of those is the more appalling possibility, but those are the only options.

He goes on to administer a mighty slap-down to the whole thing, via the prophet Isaiah, but really, that's just icing on the cake.

Happy May Day!

Whatever it means to you, Happy May Day!