A Little Sugar In The Tea Might Help
Let the Teabaggers crow all they want about the “big victories” they’ve scored in primaries around the country.
Their braggadocio, to a large degree, makes quite entertaining television.
All they have done is push viable candidates, who had real chops within the Republican Party, out of numerous races – leaving doors wide open for opponents in the Middle and on the Left to amass votes from more moderate-thinking voters.
Let the Teabaggers crow all they want about the “big victories” they’ve scored in primaries around the country.
Their braggadocio, to a large degree, makes quite entertaining television.
All they have done is push viable candidates, who had real chops within the Republican Party, out of numerous races – leaving doors wide open for opponents in the Middle and on the Left to amass votes from more moderate-thinking voters.
As long as those candidates do their homework and have enough sense to hit the right notes.
The reality of the Tea Party movement is that it isn’t as big as FOX(NotReally)News would have us believe. At most, it probably encompasses 25% of the voting public.
And, having virtually no minority voters within its ranks, this cluster of angry middle-aged-to-elderly, self-absorbed White folks lacks any true traction.
Led by the likes of the uneducated “so White he can’t go out into the sunlight without creating a blinding glare” Glenn “Cry Me A River” Beck, and the under-educated quitter-cum-opportunist “Sister Sarah” Palin, it’s frighteningly hilarious how so many people can allow themselves to be so buffaloed by liars, charlatans and buffoons.
I hesitate to inject either of these con persons’ names into any of my columns, but sometimes such inevitability simply cannot be avoided.
It is a low down dirty shame how middle-Americans can be so gullible as to heap honor and praise upon purveyors of divisiveness and hatred who are raking in millions of their (ostensibly hard-earned) dollars by the dozens, while crying that the “Big Government of un-Christian, America-hating Barack Hussein Obama, is “stealing” their paychecks.
At four months to go, the candidates the Teabaggers have backed are being exposed for the prevaricators they truly are – with irrevocable malfeasances that previously kept them out of the public arena now surfacing under the microscope of media scrutiny.
In her run to oust Nevada Democrat Harry Reid from his Senate seat, upstart Sharron Angle has yet to present a focused, workable platform. Her entire campaign has concentrated upon hatred and distrust of Mr. Reid the person, whom she claims can outspend her because he’s rich and she’s just a poor working girl.
Worse than that, Angle reiterates the Teabagger bellyache against Government as evil that should be abolished, even if it takes violent overthrow.
Yet, her goal is to become a member of the most elite 100 people in the nation.
Here in Illinois, we have a dunderheaded congressman named Mark Kirk who lied, literally, his way into office. He further built upon those falsehoods to garner a Republican nomination for the Senate seat vacated by President Obama.
In 2008, Kirk ran against bona fide Iraq war heroine Maj. Tammy Duckworth, a combat helicopter pilot who lost both of her legs resultant from enemy fire. The career politician bullshitted his way to victory at the polls by embellishing his own war record.
His exaggerations of personal “heroism” grew even longer than Pinocchio’s nose during the senatorial primary. On numerous occasions, Kirk bragged of prestigious awards and accolades for exemplary performance under hostile conditions.
In truth, he was a reserve intelligence officer who never got anywhere near a danger zone; the “awards” he claimed either never existed, or were of the “organizational” variety.
Organizational awards are often presented after those whose accomplishments that earned them have already been reassigned, yet may be displayed by anyone who thereafter joins that unit.
The only “qualification” Kirk is running on is an ongoing smear campaign against his opponent, State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.
Granted, both candidates have more baggage than Illinois needs at this time, but holding up a phony military record to garner votes is about as low as a politician can get.
Now, caught in webs of deceit of their own making, both of these candidates are hiding out from the press in their respective states. The self-proclaimed “poor” Ms. Angle has apparently found enough money in her coffers to hire a high-priced public relations firm to scrub her image.
The real horror in all this is that a platform based solely upon hatred of the way things are, with nothing more to offer than anger at Government in its current configuration, is no way to solve problems that call for well-thought out solutions.
Yet, adherence to unbridled preaching from the likes of Glenn Beck, who channels Joe McCarthy uncensored to a nationwide audience for four hours each day, and Sister Sarah, the money-grubbing 21st Century embodiment of fanatical Sister Aimee (Semple MacPherson), has already negatively impacted legislation intended for the betterment of all Americans.
Fortunately, such dangerous extremism from a vocal minority has, in the past, never made it past the starting gate; it must not now be allowed to further damage our Nation’s essence.
It is imperative to our very freedoms that Americans capable of cogent thought, with an ability to recognize the bigger picture, get out to the polls this November and vote these zealots away.
Shalom.
(Jerry Tenuto is an erstwhile Philosopher and sometime Educator. A veteran with seven years of service in the U.S. Army, he holds a BS and MA in Communications from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Depending upon your taste in political stew, you can either blame or thank Jerry for his weekly “Out Of The Blue” feature in The Lone Star Iconoclast. Visit his blog Blue State View at illinoiscentral.blogspot.com)
Constellations That Didn’t Make the Cut
The practice of inventing constellations, those imaginary patterns among the stars, predates recorded history and has been done by people around the world. In 140 CE, astronomer Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria, in his book, The Almagest, listed 48 constellations which came to be the accepted list throughout the Mediterranean region for the next 1,500 years.
The practice of inventing constellations, those imaginary patterns among the stars, predates recorded history and has been done by people around the world. In 140 CE, astronomer Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria, in his book, The Almagest, listed 48 constellations which came to be the accepted list throughout the Mediterranean region for the next 1,500 years.
During the 16th-18th centuries, as Europeans began exploring the Southern Hemisphere, they saw new and unfamiliar regions of the night sky, and invented new constellations. New ones were also being created in the northern sky, and with no official body to rule on such matters, it didn’t take long for the situation to get out of hand. The lack of uniformity among the catalogs and sky-globes muddied the waters for astronomers.
To clarify things, in 1930 the International Astronomical Union set forth boundaries for 88 official constellations, keeping most of the traditional constellations and some of the newer ones. For most of those rejected, we would probably say, “Good riddance!”
Several were named for kings, but who wants a sky full of monarchs? Two honored astronomers Charles Messier and William Herschel, but how can you select just two? Several rejects were animals–a cat, flamingo, fly, night owl, reindeer, and thrush–but the night sky is already full of animals.
Other rejects recognized technological inventions–a balloon, electric machine, printing office, sun dial, and quadrant. While these were important devices in their day, would we really want laptop computers, microwave ovens, digital cameras, and cell phones in our contemporary night sky?
Given the abundance of constellations and lore devoted to war, killing and such, I would welcome some depicting positive values, such as Scepter, the Hand of Justice, which was rejected. And how about others honoring love, compassion, acceptance, liberty, freedom, and responsibility?
One omitted constellation my gay friends would surely have wanted kept was Antinous, the young lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE). His death at age 19 so bereaved the emperor that he created a constellation in his honor. Situated on the back of Aquila the Eagle, Antinous was lifted into the heavens by the great bird. He appeared in some astronomical catalogs and globes as recently as the 1700s, but didn’t make the final cut.
Unfortunately, we’ll never know of many star patterns invented by other cultures. Surely there were tigers, elephants, and wildebeests in African skies, monkeys and crocodiles looking down on Central and South American, buffaloes stampeding across the skies of North America, and kangaroos bouncing over Australia.
• Sky Calendar.
* 2 Fri.: Midpoint of the year 2010.
* 3 Sat. morning: The Moon is above Jupiter.
* 4 Sun.: The Moon is at 3rd quarter.
* 6 Tue.: Earth is at aphelion, farthest from the Sun in its elliptical orbit, at 94.5 million miles which is 3.4% more distant than we were at perihelion on Jan. 4.
* 8 Thu. morning: The crescent Moon is below the Pleiades low in the east northeast with the orange star Aldebaran, the red eye of Taurus the bull, below.
* 9 & 10, Fri. & Sat. early evening: Brilliant Venus is within two moonwidths of Leo’s brightest star Regulus low in the west after dark.
* 11 Sun.: The new Moon passing between Earth and Sun produces a total solar eclipse that won’t be visible from our hemisphere.
* 12 Mon. evening: The thin crescent Moon is to the lower left of Mercury very low in the west northwest at dusk.
* 14 Wed. evening: The crescent Moon is to the lower left of Venus in the west.
* 15 Thu. evening: The crescent Moon is to the lower left of Mars and below Saturn in the west.
* 16 Fri. evening: The crescent Moon (left), Mars (right), and Saturn (top) form a triangle in the west.
* 17 Sat. evening: The crescent Moon is below the Virgo’s bright star Spica in the southwest.
• Naked-eye Planets. Evening: Saturn (upper left), Mars (middle), and brilliant Venus (lower right) are aligned in the west. Morning: Bright Jupiter is in the southeast.
Stargazer appears every other week. Paul Derrick is an amateur astronomer who lives in Waco. Contact him at 918 N. 30th, Waco, 76707, (254) 753-6920 or paulderrickwaco@aol.com. See the Stargazer Web site at stargazerpaul.com.
