A Halloween Poem

See Free Thinke's original poem:
"All Hallows Eve."

Halloween Cats

(With much gratitude to Stogie of Saberpoint for the graphic below)

Back row, from left to right: Cameo, alpha cat of the household and surrogate mother to the new arrival in the basket; and Mysti, still pouting a bit about the new arrival.

In the front: Amber, the sweetest of all torties, born on March 13, 2012, and still in her kittenhood.  She  tears around the house night and day as if possessed.

Enjoy the video below the fold (hat tip to Amusing Bunni's Musings):

Spooky

Not ravens (hat tip to FJ):


Even in the city, an ordinary autumn day seems spooky around this time of year ("Mist," from Duck's Flickr photostream):

People revel in fear and the eerie, particularly at this time of year.

Frankenstorm!

According to the weather reports I've been hearing and reading, Northern Virginia, where I live, will be slammed by Frankenstorm.  Forecasts project Tuesday as the worst day, but heavy rains and high winds will likely arrive earlier.

Consider The Course of Empire

(Click directly on all images to enlarge them)

From 1833-1836, American artist Thomas Cole created the following series of five paintings (oil on canvas). The title of the series is The Course of Empire. The literary source for these paintings was the following verse from Byron's from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:

There is the moral of all human tales;
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.
First freedom and then Glory - when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption - barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page...

Below are photographs of all five paintings from Thomas Cole's series The Course of Empire:

The first painting, The Savage State, shows the valley from the shore opposite the crag, in the dim light of a dawning stormy day. A hunter clad in skins hastens through the wilderness, pursuing a deer; canoes paddle up the river; on the far shore can be seen a clearing with a cluster of wigwams around a fire, the nucleus of the city that is to be. The visual references are those of Native American life.

Obama Campaign Ad Equates Voting For Obama With Having Sex?

(with a hat tip to Reliapundit of THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS)

The devolving exhibited by the Democratic Party during this election season continues. Trashy, to say the least:

Obama’s Failed Foreign Policy

It should not come as a surprise to anyone that I think US foreign policy is now, and has for a long time, been sophomoric. It is not something that originated with Barack Obama, not by a long shot, but it is also nothing Obama has reconciled his administration to improve upon. Worse, US foreign policy may be an even greater disaster today than at any other time in our post-World War II experience. I believe this because the stakes are much higher than at any other time since 1945.

Respite From Politics

(If you must politics, please keep scrolling)

Enjoy this respite from contentious topics, especially the topic of politics:


Another of Gruntlesnoot's nature videos below the fold.

Last Night's Debate

(Two posts day.  Please scroll down)

Video from NewsBusters below the fold:

Muslims Enraged By Swiss Flag

With thanks to Will for alerting us to Jihad Watch's new venture:


More RealDeal News HERE.

How to make your own animated video HERE.   

Use your freedom of expression while you still have it!

David Axelrod Outdoes Himself (With Music Addendum)

May Axelrod's words undo Obama's chances for re-election!

From Red Alert Politics:

Obama: Broken Record

Demagoguery promises to deliver but does not deliver:

Europe Today?

Check out the symbols in the graphic below (Click directly on the image to enlarge it):

Rational Nation USA has more information.

What Do Benghazi and Fort Hood Have In Common?

(With a hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance)

Connect the dots. Obama is reticent to call a terrorist attack by its correct name: Islamic jihad.  On the other hand, Obama frequently reminds us of how much Islam has contributed to America.

Mona Eltahawy – Again

I have previously posted about Mona Eltahawy and her vandalism of a sign in the New York City Subway.  The Muslim Brotherhood lauded her vandalism.

HERE she is again in a different context, that of her Tweet questioning the recent arrest in New York City of a wannabe jihadist terrorist Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis:

Is this Fed Reserve bomb plot another of those entrapments?

Twitchy has more HERE.

Jihad Watch also has MORE, and many of the comments are particularly interesting.

"Moderate Muslim" Mona Eltahawy, who became a United States citizien in 2011, certainly seems dissatisfied lately with life in the United States.

That Gigantic Sucking Noise …

by Sam Huntington

China has been as busy as a little bee flitting around the globe, making friends, asserting interests in other people’s business, intimidating neighbors, threatening others with their new navy, demanding access to oil reserves that clearly do not belong to them. They are even beginning to establish military advisory groups in some countries, providing arms and munitions to others, and selling modern military equipment to their new friends.

What The Taliban Really Fears

Hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance:

The story of Malala Yousufzai

TITLE OF THIS BLOG POST CORRECTED: Obama's Rose Garden Speech About Benghazi

LINK.  Also see THIS.

(Two posts today. Please scroll down)

A Revealing Meeting: Part Two

(If you must have politics, please keep scrolling)

As I indicated in "A Revealing Meeting: Part One," my former student R doesn't know where to turn and is under intense pressure.  She has been assigned an impossible task.  Also, various evaluators are filling R's employment folder with their critiques and calling conference after conference with her; in these conferences, no specific advice is given other than telling her what he is doing wrong.

Furthermore, R has only a provisional teaching certificate and is still taking education courses, thereby having even less time to devote to teaching her classes.  Worse, the content of these education courses consists mostly of theory nonspecific to teaching non-English speakers.

A Revealing Meeting: Part One

(If you must have politics, please keep scrolling)

On October 8, I met with R, a former student of many years ago.  She hunted me down on the Internet and asked if I would advise her. This young lady, who did not go into teaching directly from college but rather pursued another career for a few years, thought that teaching would be relatively easy.  She actually said to me, "When you were teaching me, I thought that teaching looked so easy!"

This first year as a classroom teacher, R is finding out the hard way that effective teaching is anything but easy, particularly during those first years.

R's lack of experience, however, is only the beginning of her woes as a first-year teacher.