Talk Right (posts)

The Muslim Heritage In America

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility

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Quit trashing President Obama’s accomplishments. He has done more than any other President before him. He has an impressive list of accomplishments, see list below:

        First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.

        First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.

        First President to preside over a cut to the credit rating of the United States.

        First President to violate the War Powers Act.

        First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

        First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party

        First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.

        First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.

        First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.

        First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.

        First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.

        First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to resign.

        First President to terminate America ‘s ability to put a man in space.

        First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation.

        First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.

        First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

        First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.

        First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.

        First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).

        First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.

        First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).

        First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

        First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.

        First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.

        First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 102 to date.

        First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.

        First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.

        First President to go on multiple global “apology tours” and concurrent “insult our friends” tours.

        First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayer.

        First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.

        First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.

        First President to repeat the Holy Quran & tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.

        First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they “volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences.”

        Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion.

        First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs. Arizona).

        How is this hope and change working out for you?

 

~I don’t know who put this together but I felt compelled to pass it on..  Bacon

Atavism

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility, Poet, Ya, I Am

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Old longings nomadic leap,

Chafing at custom’s chain;

Again from its brumal sleep

Wakens the ferine strain.

Helots of houses no more,

Let us be out, be free;

Fragrance through window and door

Wafts from the woods, the sea.

After the torpor of will,

Morbid with inner strife.

Welcome the animal thrill,

Lending a rest to life

Banish the volumes revered,

Sever from centuries dead;

Ceilings the lamp flicker cheered

Barter for stars instead.

Temple thy dreams with the trees,

Nature thy god alone;

Worship the sun and the breeze,

Altars where none atone.

Voices of solitude call,

Whisper of sedge and stream;

Loosen the fetters that gall,

Back to the primal scheme.

Feel the great throbbing terrene

Pulse in they body beat.

Conscious again of the green

Verdure beneath the feet.

Callous to pain as the rose,

Breathe with instinct’s delight;

Live the existence that goes

Soulless into the night.

~John Myers O’Hara

I recently got …

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility

ImageI recently got a message on Facebook which linked to the Forbes site (yep the rich we’re supposed to be hating so much), the headline being, “Who Is the Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It’s Barack Obama?” The article was spawned (surprise surprise) by Marketwatch, a “Wall Street Journal” entity (another surprise surprise). Wall Street loves the oBuma! Who can believe that the Administration who increased the national debt by a larger amount than all the administrations from Washington through Reagan isn’t the “smallest government spender since Eisenhower”? And to whom would the comparison between the oBuma and Eisenhower not spring to mind?

To people with the ability to think and reason these statements are worse than absurd, but to the members of the Church of the Black Jesus, the trillion dollar a year increase from Bush to the oBuma is explained by inflation. One helllll of an inflation but there ya go!

Admittedly the Bush administration was absurd in many ways, including spending, but the oBuma administration has done NOTHING to cut the Bush spending which makes that spending now theirs as well as the increase of that spending. Over 200 billion increase (annual). So according to the Wall Street boys, INCREASING the absurdly high Bush spending by 200 billion per annum ties the oBuma administration as the cheapest administration yet. Of course much of that spending has gone to Wall Street, Occupy indeed!

There is no mystery in seeing the Demonrats working their asses off to pull the rug out from under the greatest economical giant in history. The mystery for me is the media. The main-stream American media is indeed a propagandia. There is no longer even an attempt to appear honest. Why? What is the benefit in helping to flush America down the toilet?

The media is a huge comedy show! It literally brings me to fits of laughter almost every day! The only comedy more tragic is the American people.

As Mercilessly As a Man

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Literary and Musical Review

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Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” paints a very ingenious picture of the independence of human nature which resides in us all. The impact of her image is amplified by its setting; a black, single mother and her two daughters. Characters of three very independent personalities in spite of the apparent similarities in terms of culture and background. It is not an extraordinary tale. In fact it is somewhat common. The grace and wonder in “Everyday Use” is not the ordinary story of conflicting values and differing senses of identity. This is the very sort of story one sees over and over again. The magic in “Everyday Use” is Alice Walker’s artful telling of the tale. Walker injects a solid dose of realism which is effective even in a casual perusal, but shines quite brightly upon further study.

Her canvas is painted with brilliant colors from a broad brush. It can actually be difficult for one to become fully engaged in a creation such as this; seeing the big picture, focusing the lens, adjusting the tone. These can be such a bother, and the diamonds won’t retract their claws. Mama describes herself along with a daydream image, “I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man.” along with a daydream self-image, “I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake…  Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.” (Walker 424/5) Indeed, Mama, the reader has much to do in seeing your story through the blazing image of your you. Her words portray her rural, self-supporting life graphically and with a comedic irony which makes them a rare pleasure to read.

Mama’s description also primes the reader’s imagination of Dee, who she describes as a “cute shaped” young lady who wears “a dress so loud it hurts my eyes… I feel my whole face warming form the heat waves it throws out.” (425/20) A daughter who possesses, “scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in lye.” (425/15) Thanks to a boy-friend of Dee’s, Mama tells us, “she didn’t have much time to pay to us, but turned all her faultfinding power on him.” (425/16) Need the reader wonder about the innate character of Dee?

What of Dee’s younger sister Maggie, the damaged and much more reserved daughter who lives at home with Mama? “Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks” (424/9)

Rich and robust! The contrast between the two sisters is painted with vivid luminosity, as is Mama’s perception of it. The magnificent independence of Mama, the good looks, intelligent, radiant, yet greedy and arrogant nature of Dee, the injured, unlucky, possibly even abused young Maggie, all sing from the pages in dulcet tones.

There is also stunning symbolism woven into the tale. The quilt, a symbol of family heritage which also reflects the sewn together aspects of this particular family, the differing desires in terms of what is to become of it, and the disparate values in which it is held. Reviewer Judith Hatchett noted this and commented, “the two views of quilts represents mutually exclusive lifestyles” (Hatchett 550) The quilt, the symbolic center of the tale, was woven from patches of clothing worn by ancestors of both girls, treasured by Maggie for sentimental and useful reasons, seen as a cultural treasure to own by Dee.

The image presented here is palpable. “Everyday Use” is a good story made great by the artistic wordbrush of Alice Walker, “as mercilessly as a man.”

~Bacon

Works Cited

Hatchett, Judith et al. American Icons: An Encyclopedia of the People, Places, and Things that Have    Shaped Our Culture. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. Print

Walker, Alice et al. Compact Literature, Reading, Reacting, Writing. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010. Print

Hillary? Gun Control? People Control? Indeed!

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility

I feel driven to restate a prediction I made over a year ago. Funny it is, how my predictions keep coming true. The birth certificate, Romney, Jim’s suicide, and so on. I’m seeing this next coming to fruition precisely as I predicted it would and I need to renew my prediction in order to increase the value of the coming “I told you so”s.

Shortly before the election Barragh Hussein Obuma will pull out. He’s in the conscious process of driving his own popularity down at this very moment. Making absurd moves which are offending even his most ardent supporters. The propagandia is even stepping in and slinging a few arrows. Hillary has made some interesting moves herself, and the Media?

Weekly World News Hillary to Challenge Obama for President

The Daily Beast  Hillary Told You So

Hillary Unleashed

Huffinton Puffington Post Nancy Pelosi: Hillary Clinton Should Run for President 2016

Petition to Congress Draft Hillary Clinton for President 2012

And there are many more! Precisely as I predicted!

She’ll not make the actual announcement right away. It’ll be closer to election time. She’ll have the entire commielib, lefist, traditional Democrat (including those pissed at Obuma beyond voting). She will be in like Flynn and Bill will be the first..  whatever he is.. You can bet yer ass he’ll be supporting Hillary. Good gravy! It’ll be historical! And there’ll not be the slightest glitch in the overall plan. The bigotry of the left against the successful will roll on ahead full steam. The excuse will be “It’s that Dang Obuma’s fault”. Look at the debt! We HAVE to do something radical! And Bacon’ll say, “see, I told you so!”

And one more..  The first attempted move will be income ceilings. Everything above the ceiling must go to the government. This one may not pass right off the bat, but it’ll be thrown in the oven right away.  Those damn eeeeeevil rich sons of bitches MUST PAY! (their fair share (thanks Alinsky.)) We’ll be feelin’ good as we watch freedom/responsibility swirling down the drain.

I’m feeling prophetic, maybe I should start a religion! The Church of Total Equality of Latter Day Retards… ‘er somethin’

~Bacon

July 4, 2012 Update

OK.. modification time. Embarrassing it is but I missed some important points. I misread Obuma for one. He will not pull out. He’s not simply a servant to his masters as I presumed. He is actually completely insane. He believes in Marxism right to his core. He believes he is doing the “right thing” as did Karl Marx who was a genius, and who’s “Manifesto” seems to be more closely followed by American leadership than is our own Constitution. Read the “Communist Manifesto,” particularly the demands in Section II which could easier be seen as the “constitution” America is currently following. In any case, Obuma must go down and I don’t think Biden is seen as a magnificent option by the Demonrat party. Hillary is the next in line. Were something to happen to Obuma and Biden (Satan forbid!) Hillary is the next in line…  My goodness, how simple.

In any case, my prediction of Hillary Clinton as next POTUS still stands, the point of interest is going to be how she gets there.  The crumbling of Obuma is happening, what I missed was the actual intentions of Obuma. Praise Allah!  Ok then…

May Swenson Told It Slant

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Literary and Musical Review

The underlying biographical honesty inherent in art is unveiled by May Swenson in her poem “The Truth Is Forced”. The reader is introduced to a poet who tells the reader that this poet’s desire is to “be honest in poetry” (Swenson 2), but the reader will learn rather more than this particular poet’s desire for honesty. The poet didn’t force honesty into the words, as the title of the poem seems to imply, the poet ends up telling the reader that this production of words has actually forced honesty into the poet. The poet is revealed to, “…you (all or any, eye to eye)” (45). Swenson made the point that consciously or not, poems like all art, are acts of self discovery.

The poet describes the abstract dilemma faced by any artist desiring absolute honesty yet a sense of seclusion, “…eye to eye, I lie / because I cannot bear to be conspicuous with the truth” (Swenson 3-5). A dilemma compounded by this particular poet’s reticent nature “I would be exposed. And I would be / possessed” (10-11). Beyond a simple self introduction, the poet has set up the prerequisite for a foundational idea. The poet is not a self-centered seeker of attention, not a proud circus act, nor an intentional performer at all. This poet is private and reserved. This poet is not writing with the conscious intention of being spread naked upon the frontal lobe of the reader. “Really I feel as if / one pair of eyes were a whole hive” (19-20). Bees collecting the nectar for their own devices as well as being quite capable of delivering a sting. The poet tells the reader, my business is mine and so it shall remain, thank you very much.

Yet the poet does have something to say and can avoid the stings: “…say in symbol, in riddle, / …under masks / of any feature, in the skins of any creature” (32-36). Obviously the poet is not planning to walk naked down the page and here describes the clothes the poet can wear. Poetic line provides a veil behind which the truth can and does lurk unabashedly and without shame. The wish to “become naked in poetry” (40), will be fulfilled, and much more comfortably behind the veil this poet recognizes and describes to the reader as being provided by the poetic art of words. The individuality of the poet remains absolutely present yet mysteriously obscured.

Alicia Ostriker makes note of this in her section of the book  Body My House : May Swenson’s Work and Life, in which she makes comparisons of the works of May Swenson and Walt Whitman, into which she brings Emily Dickinson, ““Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” with fear battling the yearning for disclosure” (Ostriker 46). Which we were set up for by “Both the reticence and the desire for candor that wrestle with each other in Swenson’s eroticism are hinted at “(45). She elaborates, “…the poet twists and turns all through the poem; the poem does not state something known, but discovers its truth in its process” (46). She enhances this perception based on Swenson’s lines, “Whether you are one or two or many / it is the same” (Swenson 18-19) “Truth, forced through symbols and riddles and finally the naked self, into the poem, revealed to the poet herself, is a burden borne and born” (Ostriker 46). The poet in this performance was not only exposed to “one or two or many” (Swenson 18), the poet was exposed to the poet, “tells me / and then you (all or any, eye to eye) my whole self, / the truth” (45-47) So the poet is “eye to eye” even on the page after all, and what the poet tells turns out not to be a lie.

On paper, canvas, marble, or the sonic vibrations spawned from the keys of a piano, in art the naked truth resides. It may well not be perceived, and misperception may be the artist’s intent, yet the truth is there.  May Swenson recognized this and exposed what many an artist fails to recognize and may resist telling. Whether by design or inherent nature, however covert, the artist is always revealed in the art.

~Bacon

Works cited

Ostriker, Alicia. “May Swenson: Whitman’s Daughter.” Body My House: May Swenson’s Work and Life. 2006. 40-54. All USU Press Publications. Book 16.  http:/digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/16

Swenson,  May. “The Truth Is Forced”.  Nature: Poems Old and New. Boston: Mariner Books, 2000. 11-12. print

A Raisin in the Shade of Human Nature

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Literary and Musical Review

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Often interpreted as a statement on racism, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun actually delivers a broad presentation of human nature, of which racism can be one possible aspect. Hansberry paints individual images of the stubborn inflexibility in the nature of her characters which is also central to the human condition in general, and is rarely overcome. Hansberry’s characters exemplify the human determination to justify and support one’s own behavior based on individual beliefs and interpretations of the world.

The beliefs and dreams seen here vary from that of Lena Younger’s (“Mama”), maternal, spiritual, house with a yard, and the anchor of family. Her daughter, Beneatha Younger, dreams of independence and rebels against her mother’s traditions, favoring a much more progressive, atheistic philosophy. Beneatha dreams of herself as a youthful adventurer who’ll one day be off to Africa, the land of her roots. In her brother Walter Younger, lies the very typical view of the masculine mastery of ones own destiny, a dream for which he is willing to risk everything. One of the play’s main antagonists, Karl Lindner, feels a loyalty to his neighbors, who happen to be, as is he, not black, like the Youngers, but white. The dreams and beliefs are as desperate and true to those who hold them as are the witchdoctor’s beads to the Bechuana. While the reader is not brought to an actual resolution, Hansberry delivers a series of very telling lessons on the individuality which burns within them all. The core differences and the challenge of overcoming them shines brightly from her stage.

Mama is driven by traditional beliefs, the strength and love of family and spirituality. At the core of Mama’s dream resides her God. Yet from her daughter Beneatha we hear, “It’s all a matter of ideas, and God is just one idea I don’t accept… I don’t believe in God… I get so tired of him getting all the credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simply is not God! There is only Man, and it’s he who makes miracles!” (51)

This statement earns Beneatha an enthusiastic slap in the face from Mama. A slap which invokes from Beneatha not a change, rather a softly spoken, “…everybody thinks it’s alright for Mama to be a tyrant. But all the tyranny in the world will never put a God in the heavens” (52). Two closely linked people who absolutely love one another yet hold diametrically opposed beliefs as to the ultimate source of truth: for Mama it’s God, for Beneatha it’s man, for each it is equally the truth.

Racism, as obnoxious yet powerful a persuasion as has ever been devised, is demonstrated by one of the victims of that very conviction, Walter Younger, who utters to his wife, Ruth, as a result of his disappointment in seeing his own immediate dream of liquor store ownership slipping away, “Cause we all tied up in a race of people that don’t know how to do nothing but moan, pray and have babies” (87). Walter has obviously heard the white supremacist doctrine and here regurgitates it at his own black and pregnant wife. He sounds like a Kleagle for the Klan. But he’s really lashing out at his newly obvious lack of the mastery of his own family.

Karl Lindner is also sets up a justification of his own behavior when tells the Youngers, “…most of the trouble exist because people just don’t sit down and talk to each other. That we don’t try hard enough in this world to understand the other fellow’s problem. The other guy’s point of view” (116). He then makes this justification by pointing out that he’s actually looking for the younger’s best interest in suggesting a segregational alternative for them moving into a white neighborhood: “Negro families are happier when they live in their own communities” (118). Obviously Lindner is a racist, but does he know that? Does Lindner believe he can fool the Youngers? No, he is really fooling himself, “I sure hope you people know what you’re getting into” (149). Racism? Egocentrism? Benevolence? Has Lindner a dream? Certainly, yet his belief conceals the very lack of reason upon which it is grounded, and conceals it from himself.

Hansberry also shows the reader the possibility of conversion after the exchange during which Walter, as his son, Travis watches his father turn down Lindner’s offer. Mama, referring to Walter’s radical change of attitude says, “He finally come into his manhood today, didn’t he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain…” (151). Mama believes that Walter has finally seen the light that she’s been aware of all along. The reader is not told whether it will last, but the possibility is certainly evident.

A Raisin in the Sun is the perfect example of a section of Hansberry’s work referred to by Olga Barrios in The intellectual Spear where she says Hansberry’s “concern with the human being went far beyond any barriers of color, race or culture” (Barrios 28). Hansberry has given us a portrayal of significantly varied beliefs, dreams, and behaviors and the logic used to justify them, to themselves and one another. Ultimately the tale ends up with no winners, no losers, no resolution, nor clear cut image of what the future holds. Yet Hansberry shows very clearly, human nature with its often irrational magnificence, portrayed in a light the typical audience might not have imagined, but Lorraine Hansberry did, and portrays it vividly.

Works cited

Barrios, Olga. The Intellectual Spear: Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs. Salamanca: Atlantis, 1996. Web. 24 Apr. 2112

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Vintage Books. 1994. Print.