Home » Open thread 2/12/2025

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Open thread 2/12/2025 — 13 Comments

  1. Quite. Born this day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln, and another great man too: Charles Darwin.

    In celebration thereof, a little Beethoven piece written that same year: 6 variations on a Turkish March, op. 76, Emil Gilels pianist: https://youtu.be/jwedFsUhIzE

  2. The first time I really thought about Lincoln was when our teacher had us read and discuss “Oh Captain, My Captain”, and “Stopping by a Wood on a Snowy Evening” – both about Lincoln. We had to memorize them. Somewhere along the way we had to memorize the Gettysburg Address. I don’t imagine that any of those are mentioned today in schools. Not even in college.

  3. SECOND COMMENT: Today read that inflation is “out of control”. So Trump is to blame, right?
    That will be the talking point now, for awhile. And when unemployment numbers come out, “higher than expected”, but using real methods, that too will be Trump. The only number in the unemployment numbers I want to see is the job losses in the gov’t sectors.

  4. Pitchers and catchers report to spring camp today. No word on the crocuses up north yet, but the migrant passerines are beginning to flow through SWFL, so you know it’s coming soon.

  5. I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address as well. I must have been 11 or 12. I thought this particular phrase, for some reason, was flowery political rhetoric:

    that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

    I now regard it as the best damn thing ever spoken.

  6. Pope Francis published his suicide note. It took the form of a letter to the American Catholic bishops. In so many words, the Holy Father urged his brother bishops to intervene in American politics and oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce our country’s immigration laws.

    –R.R. Reno, “Pope Francis’s Apocalyptic Dream”
    https://firstthings.com/pope-franciss-apocalyptic-dream/

    __________________________________

    Pope Francis, tear down your [Vatican] wall!

    This guy gets on my nerves.

  7. I can’t get my head around the fact that Pope Francis seems to care a lot more about having a Catholic VP in favor of enforcing immigration laws than he ever did about having a Catholic president who was about as pro-abortion as they come.

  8. An Emerson quote which is extremely applicable today in all sorts of fields and contexts, but especially in today’s politics, “The more they talked about honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

  9. I haven’t read the “Apocalyptic Dream” yet, but let me begin by saying that it’s rather difficult to embarrass the Catholic church, given its checkered history. However, I think Pope Francis has succeeded in embarrassing the church.

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