Trump Warns Biden Will Cause WWII and Praises Putin
Kareem's Take On: Texas Just Became the Most Corrupt State in the Country, Jann Wenner Disses Women and Black Musicians,TV Reviews and Roy Orbison Sings
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
When I was a younger man, I was very passionately in agreement with this opening stanza of Thomas’ poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night.” It is a rousing call to rally against the encroachment of death, to fight rather than succumb to death’s gentle entreaty. Thomas was 33 when he wrote those lines, and they exude youth’s natural rebellion against the inevitability of death.
Today, at 76, I see death as less of a ruthless foe and more as an amiable traveling companion. Death looms daily and, therefore, defines our lives. It forces us to choose what’s valuable. It inspires us to be better, to do better. There’s a wonderful exchange in the movie Bang the Drum Slowly in which one character, a young professional baseball player who is dying of a rare disease, says, “Everybody'd be nice to you if they knew you were dying.” To which his friend says, “Everybody knows everybody is dying, that's why people are as good as they are.”
So, while I continue to rage against the dying of the light, I’m also not afraid to gentle into that good night. That is the relationship with death I am comfortable with.
Meanwhile, like the song says, “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.”
Texas Attorney General Is Acquitted in Landmark Senate Trial (The New York Times)
SUMMARY: The Texas Senate voted on Saturday to acquit the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, after a nine-day impeachment trial that focused on allegations of corruption and divided the Republican Party.
Mr. Paxton, a three-term incumbent who had been suspended from the post since his impeachment in May, was immediately reinstated.
Despite a process overseen by Republicans, with Republicans in the defense and in the prosecution, the result ended in near party-line votes, with members of his party lining up behind Paxton. Only two Republican senators voted in favor of conviction on any article. With a two-thirds vote required for conviction, no article received even a majority vote.
Mr. Paxton responded quickly to what he called a “sham impeachment” that he said had been coordinated partly by a “kangaroo court” in the Texas House.
“The weaponization of the impeachment process to settle political differences is not only wrong, it is immoral and corrupt,” he said in a statement.
MY TAKE: