"Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout"

The Peace and Justice Committee of the Congregational Unitarian Church, 221 Dean Street will show the documentary HACKING DEMOCRACY at 7 PM, Tuesday, May 13.

“We are in the middle of another Presidential election and many of the scandalous problems exposed by this film are unsolved,” according to committee chair Ray Eberhardt.

The documentary, broadcast on HBO throughout November & December 2006, exposes the dangers of voting machines used during America's mid term and presidential elections. Electronic voting machines count approximately 90% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections. The technology is also increasingly being used across the world, including in Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Latin America. Filmed over three years this exposé follows the investigations of a team of citizen activists and hackers as they take on the electronic voting industry, targeting the Diebold corporation

 
HACKING DEMOCRACY uncovers incendiary evidence from the trash cans of Texas to the ballot boxes of Ohio, exposing secrecy, votes in the trash, hackable software and election officials rigging the presidential recount.

Ultimately proving votes can be stolen without a trace "Hacking Democracy" culminates in the famous 'Hursti Hack'; a duel between the Diebold voting machines and a computer hacker from Finland - with America's democracy at stake.

 
HACKING DEMOCRACY was Executive Produced by Sarah Teale & Sian Edwards of Teale-Edwards Productions LLC.

The program is free and open to the public. There will be time for discussion following the showing.

Grandma Pat Sorensen shares her new digital camera with her Daughter- in-Law and Maureen’s aunt, Jan Larsen. (Photo by Evan’s mom. Laurie Buchanan) 

Laurie and Evan Buchanan. (Photo by Len Buchanan)

Kathy Brady Murfin and Maureen chat with Michael, Arlene Brenenen, and Ira Murfin.


Arlene Brennen listens to Patrick Murfin lie..

David MacKinley, Jan Kaiser, Janice Kolberg,  and daughter Maureen. 


Evan, Paula and Brandon Stolz.

Maureen's cousin Shannon, Uncle Al, Buddha (in rear) and Aunt Benitta.

.
Sister Maureen and Heather Pearson dance.


The Cake. (Photo by Laurie Buchanan.)


Cutting the Cake. (Picture by Laurie Buchanan.



Scott Larsen, Maureen, Pat Sorenson, Jan Larsen, Len Buchannan.


Maureen and Evan open presents at home.

\
Norton I, Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico

 I am a regular participant in the UUHistory Chat list serve.  Today we received the following post, I thought might be of interest here.

In doing research for my sermon this Sunday I have discovered that 
Joshua Abraham Norton, otherwise known as Norton I, the Emperor of 
the United States, frequently attended the First Unitarian Society in
San Francisco.  Apparently he was very fond of D. Horatio Stebbins
Two of the Emperor's decrees deal with religious subjects and both  
call for religious unity and/or the establishment of a Universal 
Religion. Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever written about 
Norton's Unitarian connection? I realize that he is not much of 
subject for serious scholarship but he is one of the better loved 
eccentrics in U.S. history and a patron saint of the Discordians.
--Colin Bossen

The Emperor Norton is one of those eccentric figures who cannot help but bring a smile to the lips.  An absurd figure, he became beloved by his adopted San Franciso which honored his eccentricities , and even honored his self-produced scrip.  After his death in 1880 one observer noted that his story would only be possible in San Fransisco, "the most sentemental city in the world."  In the '60's he was resurected as a popular counter cultural hero.  He was incorporated as in saint in the faux religion, the Discordian Society, propounded by  Robert Anton Wilson and  Robert Shay in their cult classic Illuminatus Trilogy.  I believe Wilson--an old aquaintance from my days as a Chicago Wobbly and anarchist--who died last year, had some UU connections. Sounds like a Unitarian Jihad kind of guy

 --Brother Broadsword of Enlightenment

 Cross Posted to Unitarian Jihad

Reading in Rockton.

This past Sunday the nice folks at the Unitatrian Universalsit Congregegation of Rock Valley  in Rockton, Illinois let me come and do an abbreviated version of my service Don’t Be Alarmed, Ma’am, He’s Only Committing Poetry.  It was good to see old friends from my home church, the Congregational Unitarian Church in Woodstock.  Jerry Paulsen is the president of 48 member congregation.  Ray Empereur, a former CUC moderator, invited me and drove all the way to Crystal Lake to pick me up in his red VW convertible.  Unfortunately it was too cool that morning, though the sun was shining on Midwestern countryside, to let our freak flags fly.

The congregation, which calved from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockford a few years ago, has been meeting for four years in an old school building in downtown Rockton.  The school was original built in the 1920’s and a classroom wing added in the early ’60’s.  They are in the process of buying the building and planning for the future.

It’s a lay let congregation that is currently served part-time by a student from Meadville/Lombard.  It will be a while before they can call a minister, but they fill the pulpit frequently with guests like me.

The congregation was attentive and appreciative.  They even talked about inviting me back to share some of the poems that I had to cut from the service due to time limitations.  I’d certainly like to come back.

Here is the little poem with which I closed the service.

AN HONOR TO BE ALIVE

This happenstance assemblage of atoms,

            this collection of random stardust

            echoing an explosive moment of creation,

            this unlikely bag of seawater, carbon and stone,

            oddly and inexplicably ambulatory,

            miraculously sees and recognizes you,

            the very you seeing and recognizing.

It is an honor to be alive.

--Patrick Murfin

Last week a post by the Rev. Dan Harper posted the “attack ad” video above on his Yet Another Unitarian Universalist.  Brilliant.  I want to share it with you, along with my usual unfocused and long winded thoughts.

The video got my attention because it is like a jack knifed semi in the middle of the five way intersection of many of this blog’s main interests—politics, Unitarian Universalism, American history, tolerance, and media.

On the political level it is a brilliant parody of the attacks on Barack Obama and his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.  Every time that brouhaha seems to die down it gets resurrected again.  Members of the bloviator’s union are arguing this very morning whether the re-emergence of the Wright controversy during the smarmy ABC Debate contributed to Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory in the Pennsylvania Primary.  Obama had been dramatically closing on Clintons one time nearly 24 point lead in the polls and many observers thought—or hoped—he could eke out a slender victory or at least hold Clinton to a meaningless 2-4 point victory.  In the end Clinton won by about 9 points—not enough for her to blow Obama out of the water, but enough to keep her plausibly (if you don’t parse the delegate numbers very carefully) in the race.

Just this past Sunday, as part of a service on race in America, members of my congregation, the Congregational Unitarian Church in Woodstock, got to view long-form excerpts from two of Rev. Wright’s most controversial sermons—“God Damn America” and “America’s Chickens have Come Home to Roost.”  Viewed in context the widely publicized snippets repeated in heavy rotation at Fox News and elsewhere, most of us found ourselves not only understanding the remarks, but agreeing with them.  I noted that the Rev. Dan Larsen’s first post 9/11 sermon made most of the same points as Wright’s, although in the measured and hyper-rational style of the Unitarian pulpit.  Yet had snippets of that sermon been linked to Obama, it would not have damaged him as badly—a lot of white Americans still soil their underwear when they see a shouting, angry black man in African style robes and ardent choruses of hallelujahs  from the pews.  Call it a cultural thing.

The case of William Howard Taft, the last Unitarian President of the United States, is an interesting one.  By general consensus Taft ranks somewhere smack dab in the middle of rankings of presidents on the worst-to-greatest continuum.  Following the dazzling Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and doomed to only one term when T.R. decided America could not do without him and split the Republican Party, it is perhaps the best that could be expected. 

Taft was a solid, if unflashy, progressive.  His Unitarianism not only informed his religious liberalism, but his political liberalism as well.  Back home in Cincinnati he had been president of the local Unity Club, Jenkin Lloyd Jones’s breeding ground for social gospel liberalism in the Western Unitarian Conference.  If the restless Roosevelt hadn’t gotten the presidential itch again, Taft would have undoubtedly handily won re-election with support of many Northern workers and urban Catholics who had been repelled by the Evangelical anti-Catholicism that many of William Jennings Bryan’s followers brought to the Democrats in 1908.

It is one of the great “what ifs” in American history.  With Taft leading a united Republican Party with a dominant progressive wing, the GOP could easily have become the liberal party of the 20^th Century and Democrats would have continued to stagnate as a regional party hopelessly divided between Southern reactionaries and Western Populists.

But, of course it was not to be.  The shattered Republican Party reverted to the hands of Robber Baron big business types in coalition with Mid-Western rural conservatives and Evangelical prohibitionists.  Progressives mostly shifted to the Democrats.  Urban Catholics returned to the fold.  And when under another Roosevelt, the party adopted much of the platform of the old Debsian Socialist Party, Democrats emerged as the party of modern liberalism.

Meanwhile Taft’s reputation among Unitarian Universalists has suffered despite his long and faithful service to congregations in Cincinnati and Washington, DC, his near miss at bringing the Philippine Catholic Church into the Unitarian fold en masse, and his denominational leadership.  Instead we tend to remember his virtual expulsion of John Haynes Holmes and other pacifists ministers when he was President of the old National Conference of Unitarian Churches during the First World War.  Holmes has become an icon for those who treasure and activist “prophetic” ministry and who yearn for the UUA to become an explicitly “Peace Church.”  By default that has transmuted Taft into a war mongering ogre in the eyes of some. 

There can be no denying that Taft—and the leadership of the American Unitarian Association (AUA)—were caught up in the war hysteria of 1917 and ran roughshod over the dissenters.  I have been among those UU history geeks who have written critically of Taft’s position.  But it is unfair to judge the whole long and productive life of William Howard Taft on the basis of its ugliest moment.

Come to think of it, our eagerness to do just that shows that we are as apt to make a snap judgment on a sliver of a man’s life as any Ditto Heads swallowing the Wright/Obama poison pill.

I was dutifully playing secretary at the McHenry County Democratic Patry’s monthly meeting last night when ABC hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos played their game of pin-the-slur-on-the-donkey at the Presidential Debate.  I hopped on the Internet when I got home and gave it a spin and found sputtering outrage and slack-jawed disbelief in about equal measure.  It seems like the boys couldn’t get to a substantive policy question for more than 50 minutes, instead pasting both candidates—but Barack Obama in particular—with  a parade of tempest in a tea pot questions.  Flag lapel pins?  Can your opponent win?  In a particularly pathetic moment Stephanopoulos floated a question about the association of Obama and former Weather Underground fugitive Billy Ayers—the two sat on a charity board for a couple of years together over a decade or so ago.  The question was more outrageous in that it was literally spoon fed to the former Clinton political operative by Sean Hannity, one of the most over the top Fox “News” ranters.   

Perhaps it was predictable to find ABC excoriated on the Huffington Post and the Daily Koz.  Certainly it was no surprise to watch Keith Obermann’s reaction at MSNBS in the immediate aftermath of the train wreck.  But it was a mild surprise this morning to hear equally scornful commentary from just about every one in sight, except of the New York Times’ David Brooks, who fawned over the ABC performance.  Just about everyone else was scathing.  In perhaps the most widely circulated critique the Washington Post’s Tom Shales wrote that Gibson and Stephonopulous “turned in shoddy, despicable performances.”  Editor & Publisher it "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years."

ABC’s own web site was deluged by protests, and not just by Obama partisans, lefties, and Democrats.  When I last checked 17,829 comments were posted.  Of course I could read even a fraction of them, but I read dozens.  I was hard pressed to find even one supportive comment.

The network was force to acknowledge the uproar on its evening news broadcast anchored by Gibson.  They ran a piece called “The Debate about the Debate” and even ran scrolls of some of the outraged comments.  At the end Gibson blandly said that ABC appreciates the comments.  He neither defended nor apologized for the conduct of the debate.  Stephanopoulos, a staple of the broadcast’s political coverage was conspicuously absent, although he defended his performance elsewhere.

MoveOn.Org is circulating a petition to ABC and other networks demanding a higher standard of ethics and journalism.  I was proud to sign it.  I hope you do too.

At the third annual Thomas Jefferson Dinner of the Democratic Party of McHenry County, more than two hundred folks, almost half of them from organized labor, crowded the ball room of the Prairie Lodge at Sun City in Huntley on Saturday Night.

The room was buzzing with excitement.  And I must admit that I was a little excited myself.  I was on tap to receive the Robert McGarry Award for Community Service.  The Murfin contingent filled up two tables right up front.  Not only was my wife, Kathy Brady-Murfin, in attendance, but my daughters Heather Pearson and Maureen Buchanan were on hand with their families.  So were Evan Buchanan’s parents Laurie and Len, “Grandma” Pat Sorensen, and Libby Pappalardo of the McHenry County Peace Group and her husband Brian.  My former sister in law and dear friend Arlene Brennen was there with her husband Michael. A whole contingent of Wobblies came up from Chicago including Fellow Workers Judy Freeeman, Mike Hargis, Kathy Taylor, and Hannah Frish.  These folks surprised me with another gift I will treasure, an IWW belt buckle.

Here are some photos from the evening.

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White kicked off the evening with remarks.  He made a special effort for all the candidates present to get photos with him to use in their publicity.  His advice to them:  “Use my name any way you like to help you and ask for permission later.”  White had to rush off to another event, but took time for everyone who wanted to shake his hand.

                                                 

McHenry County Democratic Party Chair Kathy Bergan Schmidt, was mistress of ceremonies.
                                

Congresswoman Melissa Bean was on hand telling the audience how frightened suburban Republicans in Congress are as they watch once reliable districts slip into the Democratic column. Bean has also been on the road for Barack Obama’s  Presidential Campaign.

                                                   
Sean McGarry, son of the late, beloved Party Chair Bob McGarry reminisced about his father and paid tribute to his mother Lois as he introduced the presentation of the Robert McGarry Award for Community Service.

                                

It was an overwhelming honor to receive the award.  I managed to get through my acceptance speech.  The prepared remarks, which were more or less what I actually said, are posted at the end of this entry.

Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is a popular figure in McHenry County.  Last summer he made a point of marching with the Party in several local parades.  Giannoulias is also a high profile supporter of his good friend Senator Obama.

                                                   
 

Paula Yensen, Lake-in-the-Hills Turstee, candidate for District 2 McHenry County Board, and major domo of the Jefferson Dinner introduced the Thomas Jefferson Award for Lifetime Achievement.  Latter in the evening former Party Chair Patrick Quimet surprised her with a dozen roses in recognition her work on the dinner and the audience rose in a standing ovation.

                                                

Former Illinois AFL-CIO President Margaret Blackshere rose to accept the Thomas Jefferson Award.  Her rise from kindergarten teacher to leadership of the state labor  body is legendary.  She recounted ticking items off of her personal “Bucket List” since retiring last year.  She told inspiring stories of defying gun toting guards in Indonesia by singing Solidarity Forever  to young women workers barred from receiving her visit to their company housing  and aiding an injured girl in Cambodia.  But her biggest “bucket list” item this year is “Getting Barack Obama elected President.!”                   

The following is, more or less, what I said in my acceptance remarks.

This is an honor in so many ways.  I am so glad to be part of this celebration honoring a personal hero, Thomas Jefferson whose ringing words have been a major inspiration to me and whose flawed personal life reminds me of how difficult it can be to live up to our loftiest aims.

It is great to be here on a night that is so much a celebration of labor movement and our mutual dedication to the rights and welfare of working people.  I am humbled to be honored the same evening as Margaret Blackshere.  By the way, Margaret, we both are former Union officers.  You led the thousands of members of the ALF-CIO in Illinois.  At the age of 23 I was General Secretary Treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World and literally sat in Big Bill Heywood’s old chair, the nominal leader of maybe 2000 member world wide.  Some of my oldest friends from my Wobbly days are in attendance.  It may be safe for them to share a few stories.  I believe the statue of limitations has run out.

It is humbling to receive an award in the name of Bob McGarry.  Not only was he a good friend—he was a friend to every one he met—but he was a personal mentor who dared bring me on as his vice chair at a time some in the Party fretted that I was a wild eyed radical.

I am also happy to see folks I have worked with over the years as I have tried to be of service to the causes of peace, justice, and equality in McHenry County.  Any thing that I might have accomplished has only been made possible by the hard work and sacrifice of so many as we worked together at the Congregational Unitarian Church, with the Interfaith Council for Social Justice and Diversity Day, and in the McHenry County Peace Group.

Of course my family has been patient with me.  They were often cheated from my full attention.  They got used to me being gone for meetings or finding me at the computer at 3 AM.  Special thanks to my wife, Kathy Brady Murfin; my daughters Heather Pearson and Maureen Buchanan who are here tonight with their families.

I was a stranger in McHenry County, lonesome and at a loss as to how to renew the activism that had been the center of my adult life when I responded to a little want ad placed by then Democratic Party Chair Richard Short for precinct committeemen.  Since then I have served under chairs Monty Yeats, Frank McClatchy, Bob McGarry, John Bartmann, Pat Ouimett, Tom Cynor, and Kathy Bergan Schmidt.  I even spent a couple of months in the chair myself.  That’s better than 18 years.  I realize I am receiving this award mostly for having hung around so long.

But I appreciate it more than I can say.

        Top Administration figures signed off on water boarding and other torture. 

The establishment press is finally beginning to wake up to just how high and deep the scandal of the U.S. Governement’s enthusiastic commitment to the use of torture became under the Bush maladministration.  The alternative press and blog-o-shere have been sniffing around this story for years.  But when ABC News on Wednesday ran with the story with a new few juicy details it became impossible for the highest echelons of the government to deny detailed knowledge and approval of torture by the CIA.

Truthout today reprinted summaries from the Associated Press (AP) and the Washington Post as well as excerpts from comments by top blogers.

To summarize, shortly after the 9/11 attacks the Principals Committee of the National Security Council, chaired by then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice began a series of meeting to examine, in excruciating detail, exactly what sort of harsh and coercive interrogation the Central Intelligence Committee (CIA) would be allowed to conduct.  In addition to Rice the committee included the highest echelon of administration figures from torture enthusiast and cheerleader Vice President Dick Cheney—who began gushing over the opportunity to torture while the smoke and dust was still rising from the World Trade Center and Pentagon rubble—to supposed moderates like Secretary of State Colin Powel.  Also present were Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and CIA Director George Tenent.

While President Bush was not personally in attendance of any of the meetings, the results of conversations by his most senior cabinet level officials had to be shared with him and he had to sign off on their decisions.

Most of the meetings came at the urging of a very nervous Tenent who clearly understood that the Administration was ghoulishly eager to torture, but worried frantically that he and his agents might subsequently be held liable under U.S. or international law for using interrogation techniques here-to-fore against U.S. domestic law, not approved by the Army’s Field Manual on interrogation, and in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Cheney operatives and loyalists planted inside the Ashcroft’s Department of Justice, notably John Yoo,  had already drafted opinions that placed “Enemy Combatants” outside the jurisdiction of the Geneva Convention and defined torture so narrowly that "only extreme acts causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure” qualified.  These opinions became the so-called Golden Shield to protect CIA personnel and the basis of the Presidents repeated bald faced claims that the United States “doesn’t torture.”  Later, in March 2003 yet another Justice Department opinion held that it wasn’t torture if “interrogators did not specifically intend to torture their captives.”

Despite all of this Tenent repeatedly asked the committee to explicitly sign off on specific interrogation techniques each time a so called “high value” al Qaida operative was captured.  These techniques, which included hitting, slapping, kicking, sleep deprivation, prolonged subjection to “uncomfortable” positions and water boarding, were laid out in detail.  The committee approved equally detailed authorizations.

In 2004 the Golden Shield opinions leaked to the press resulting in an uproar of public revulsion and outrage.  The Justice Department was forced to rescind the memos, while the Administration continued to insist that harsh interrogation techniques were not torture and were essential to intelligence gathering.

An even jitterier Tenent returned to the Committee when another high profile al Queda figure was captured. to ask for authorization to use “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  Despite alleged queasiness about torture by Powel, an assertive Rice told the CIA Director “This is your baby. Go do it.”

Powel was evidently not the only one to harbor second thoughts.  At one point Ashcroft, whose Justice Department had issued the sweeping opinions in support of abusive interrogation, was heard to say after a meeting, “Why are we talking about this in the White House?  History will not be kind to us.”

Bingo! Ashcroft could not be more right.  He knew, even if the others thought that they could clamp down on the flow of information out of the White House with tight secretly controls, that the story would emerge sooner rather than later.  Having high level officials sign off in such detail—and in the White House no less—stripped them and the President of all important “plausible deniability” as gruesome details became public.  He, and probably other members of the committee, resented Tenent for putting him in this position.

Previous CIA directors would have been satisfied with a wink and a nod.  And if caught, like they were in Central America, they were willing to chalk up abuse to isolated “rogue” elements.  They saw “protecting the President” as part of their job.  Not Tenent, who already knew that he was going to be made the fall guy for the failure to find the predicted “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.  He wanted to make sure that if he went down for torture, they all would.

It looks like  his wish—and Ashcroft’s nightmare—may now come  true.

Some blogers are speculating—and gloating—that these revelations might eventually lead to indictments or impeachment.  Fat chance.  In one of their most disgraceful movements Congressional Democrats caved in to administration threats and passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which protected the big shots from prosecution under the War Crimes Act.

On the other hand, Committee members might want to reconsider any foreign travel plans that they may have without the explicit protection of Diplomatic Immunity.  It is not beyond the realm of possibility that they could be arrested and prosecuted for violation of international law.  Now wouldn’t that be just too bad?

The folks at MoveOn.org asked blogers to share this video.  I’m more than happy to oblige.

The late, great Molly Ivins used to cite the Rule of Holes:  When you find yourself stuck in one, stop digging.  This simple bit of folk wisdom has escaped the Neo Con warlocks, the Dark Sith Lord Cheney, and the Resident.  Egged on by General Petraeus, he of the Douglas McArthur memorial hair cut and dazzling chest full of ribbons, GOP Presidential wannabe Senator John McCain continues to dig with gusto.  Not satisfied with the hole he’s in, he has announced an eagerness to dig a new one—talking up the administration dream of a preemptive war, presumably with Iran.

Some Americans are still under the delusion that McCain is some sort of maverick and a critic of the Bush war policy.  The only criticism the senator has consistently had of the war was that it wasn’t being pursued with adequate gusto and efficiency.  Pass on this MoveOn video clip to anyone you know who might be sharing that delusion.  Or to any one who tells you they will vote for McCain if their choice fails to win the Democratic Party nomination for President.

If it’s April, it must be National Poetry Month.  Once again we celebrate the art form beloved of blue haired ladies and claimed potty mouth hip hop practitioners.  It is also National Kite Month, National Humor Month, and National Mathematics Education Month.  So I guess it’s understandable if you missed the celebration in the midst of all of the hoopla over kites, The Aristocrats, and quadratic equations.

Last year, I posted a long rant on the subject after nearly missing the observance myself.  

This year I want to celebrate with two poems, one by a Twentieth Century master and the second my own self described manifesto on poetry.

The first is my nomination for the most important poem of the Twentieth Century, although I have yet to find anyone who agreed with me.  It was spawned by the experience of E. E. Cummings.  Young Cummings went to France in The First World War to serve as a volunteer ambulance driver.  He was soon disabused of any romantic notions of war that he might have harbored. Overheard complaining about the waste and futility of war, he was arrested by French authorities and placed in a concentration camp.  He was only released after several months when his Unitarian minister father used all of his connections to get the American government to intercede on his son’s behalf.  This poem was inspired by that experience.

It caused a scandal when it was first published.  It remains too raw for polite company today.  When I first staged a performance of my program Four Hundred Years of Unitarian and Universalist Poetry From John Milton to Sylvia Plath at my home church, I was told in no uncertain terms that it could not be read in a church, not even a UU church, on Sunday morning.  I managed to get it back in the program when we presented readers’ theater style production at the Collegium, an annual gathering of liberal religious scholars and an annual Central MidWest District (UUA) conference.

In light of contemporary events this poem speaks louder and more authentic than ever

i sing of Olaf glad and big

whose warmest heart recoiled at war:

a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig

westpointer most succinctly bred)

took erring Olaf soon in hand; 

but--though an host of overjoyed 

noncoms(first knocking on the head 

him)do through icy waters roll 

that helplessness which others stroke

with brushes recently employed 

anent this muddy toiletbowl, 

while kindred intellects evoke 

allegiance per blunt instruments--

Olaf(being to all intents

a corpse and wanting any rag 

upon what God unto him gave) 

responds,without getting annoyed 

"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave

(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers 

(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride) 

their passive prey did kick and curse

until for wear their clarion            

voices and boots were much the worse, 

and egged the firstclassprivates on

his rectum wickedly to tease 

by means of skilfully applied

bayonets roasted hot with heat--

Olaf(upon what were once knees)

does almost ceaselessly repeat

"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which

assertions duly notified  

threw the yellowsonofabitch

into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)

i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because

unless statistics lie he was

more brave than me:more blond than you.

--e. e. cummings