Atlas Shrugs

I'll be seeing you .............

Late night Atlas. Going to shut down early ......smile. Let me leave you with this, a personal love letter, a song so close to my heart, I can barely share it. Listen to it, twice.

Billie Holiday, I'll be seeing you.

A Sunny Open Thread, eh?

On the sunny side of the street .......Louis Armstrong

Hell, if not now, when?

Histoire d'Amour Open Thread

Barbara - Ma Plus Belle Histoire d'Amour hat tip Ralph

The Forgotten Open Thread

Ted Pearce

A Green Open Thread

No, not that green, silly. You know me better than that.

John Coltrane Quartet - On Green Dolphin Street - 1960 Rare and wonderful.

Coltrane with the Miles Davis Quintet of the time, sans Miles. Wynton Kelly is on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums.

BOSCH FAWSTIN: "From Mohammed to Ayn Rand"

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature. Ayn Rand

Regular Atlasians know that the reason why I do what I do is ART! MUSIC! LOVE! It is rare that my work and my aesthetic merge happily. I am talking about Bosch Fawstin. His work is wonderful.

Not all critics write academic tomes. Ex-Muslim cum Objectivist Bosch Fawstin's new book will contain several essays explaining his challenging, often controversial views on Islam and the War on Terror. But as a cartoonist, Fawstin is the ideal person to make the definitive anti-Jihad superhero: Pigman. For the past several years, cartoonist he has been posting images of the characters from his upcoming graphic novel The Infidel on his blog. As the time grew near to begin releasing The Infidel ProPiganda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad... 

There is a terrific interview with Bosch Fawstin, 'From Mohammed to Ayn Rand ' (That title is the story of my life ...... only backwards), over at Frontpage:

DS: What prompted you to abandon Islam? Could you discuss the circumstances behind that decision?

BF: I didn't so much abandon Islam as fade away from it, and I didn't have much faith to lose to begin with. It's tough to say you've left something if you've never really embraced it. Hugh Fitzgerald is right in saying "the atmospherics of Islam" can affect even the least devout Muslim in a detrimental way. A strong thrust within Islam is to see any and all things outside of Islam as worthless, most particularly non-Muslims. When we did go to mosque there was never any real sense that something important was taking place. The majority of us who were involved in this pretense had no idea what to do, unless we followed the imam's prayer moves (and many in attendance were fooling around anyway). "Islam" was the name of the thing that was held as 'the good' in my household, and it was that vagueness which helped keep it at bay. It was only when I started taking morality seriously that I realized Islam had nothing to offer me.

DS: You say that Islam had nothing to offer you. What did you find that did? What are the schools of thought and who are the thinkers who have most influenced you and your work?

BF: I found Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, first by watching the film version of The Fountainhead, and then by reading her novels and nonfiction works. I felt at home reading her work. It was the first time in my life that I saw the concept of morality being taken seriously outside of religion. A morality that was based in reality and had more to say about life on earth, freedom and the individual than anything I had read before. It was only fitting that my favorite storyteller in comics, Frank Miller, was also influenced by her work, as was another favorite of mine, Steve Ditko, who has spent most of his career expressing Objectivist ideas through his work.

Read the whole thing here.

ProPiganda is his second book and it's available now. Table for One is his first book, available here, and The Infidel is his third, to begin release as a series this summer. ProPiganda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad features Pigman for the first time in print.

Check out the link to ProPiganda. There is fabulous little package discounted with Table for One at this link. What a great father's day gift idea :)

ProPiganda is a compilation of illustrations, cartoons & essays that serves as a preview to Bosch Fawstin's upcoming graphic novel, The Infidel. Most of the illustrations and all the essays are exclusive to this collection. The Infidel is a story about twin brothers whose Muslim background comes to the forefront of their lives on 9/11. One twin responds to the attacks by creating a comic book featuring Pigman, the Jihadists' worst nightmare, [who exploits the enemy's pigotry], while the other submits fully to Islam.

Issue #1 of The Infidel hits late July. For a first look, go to here.

BTW, I loved Fawstin's take on Geert Wilders:

How great is this post :)

Leonard! Open up the Thread .............

Leonard Cohen, Take this Waltz.

Leonard  is in Manhattan as we speak. How fookin' great is that? No, seriously. Life is good! Sweet.

In Vienna there are four mirrors
in which your mouth and the echoes play.
There is a death for piano that paints little boys blue.
There are beggars on the roof.
There are fresh garlands of tears.
Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this waltz that dies in my arms.
Because I love you, I love you, my love,
in the attic where the children play,
dreaming ancient lights of Hungary through the noise,
the balmy afternoon, seeing sheep and irises of snow
through the dark silence of your forehead
Federico Garcia Lorca 1929

One more!

Like a Bird on the Wire

Ne Me Quitte an Open Thread

Ne Me Quitte Pas - Nina Simone

The Very Thought of an Open Thread

Billie Billie Billie ..... The Very Thought of You

A Foolish Open Thread

These Foolish Things Chet Baker

Indeed

Irena Sendler, an Angel, gets the Hollywood Treatment

9pm Eastern time CBS tonight - check your local listings.

"Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory,” Miss Sendler said in the letter.

Last year I wrote of this angel when she passed. The Jewish people owe much to the righteous Gentiles who risked everything to save Jewish life. Then, as now, righteous Gentiles will once again help the Jewish people and the state of Israel fight their mortal enemies.

I am thrilled that Hallmark Hall of Fame has honored Irena Sendler with their latest production. Please watch, take a moment and thank them. It's a mitzvah.

Find television listings for these programs and more at LocateTV.

Against the Darkness Dorothy Rabinowitz

It's a given, this column noted a while back, that in "Hallmark Hall of Fame" productions darkness may threaten, but not for long -- not in those gleaming, handsomely mounted dramas with their inevitable satisfactory resolutions. All the more remarkable, then, that this weekend should bring "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler" (Sunday, 9-11 p.m. EDT, on CBS), a new production so terrifying in its power and its refusal of false notes. There is in this story of the Polish social worker who -- with a band of like-minded compatriots -- set about saving as many Jews as she could from annihilation at the hands of the German occupiers no glimmer of happy endings or darkness lifting.

This is a "Hallmark Hall of Fame" film unlike any other -- but more important by far, it's unlike any other ever made on this history of rescuers and the rescued. In writer-director John Kent Harrison's picture, the heroes aren't given to speechmaking about the noble cause, and neither do the Germans make declarations on their ultimate aims for the Jews -- which is, in any event, entirely clear. That scrupulous avoidance of underlining and bombast would by itself be a case for the film's distinction, but it's only one of many.

Count among those other cases its unsparing authenticity. The film (shot in Riga, Latvia) propels us into the life of those grim Warsaw streets, both inside the ghetto, where some 441,000 Jews were packed, and outside, where Irena Sendler (Anna Paquin) and her colleagues operated. The details of life in the confines of the ghetto, which the real Irena Sendler was able to visit in her role as a social worker, flash by quickly -- familiar images of the emaciated, the dying, the children at play among the corpses or engaged in the deadlier business of food smuggling.

What is much less familiar is the story of the rescue efforts that took place outside those walls, which Irena Sendler and her allies in the secret organization known as Zegota -- Council for Assistance to the Jews -- undertook. She was the chief organizer of the effort that resulted in the saving of 2,500 Jewish children; and before her work with Zegota, she provided hundreds of Jews of all ages with false papers, and managed to get them to hiding places outside the ghetto -- otherwise known as the Aryan side.

But, as the film makes clear -- as some of the film's exaggerated publicity efforts unfortunately don't -- she was not alone in her mission. In a country whose population of anti-Semites was not sparse -- Poles who celebrated the deportation of their neighbors, betrayed Jews in hiding, or extorted money from some in exchange for remaining silent and then, when the Jews could pay no more, turned them over to the Germans -- there was another class of Polish society. Mostly from the intelligentsia, or political activists, committed Catholics and assorted others, they were entirely aware of the mortal peril in which this work placed them -- and their numbers were, nevertheless, not few. They provided the false papers, scouted for the hiding places, persuaded other Poles on the Aryan side to shelter Jews, and foraged for intelligence on the deportations. Their spies brought the first warnings to the ghetto inhabitants -- not easily believed -- of the destination to which those trains would likely take them. Namely, to their immediate deaths -- and not, as the Germans always took pains to persuade them, to camps where they could perform useful labor for the Reich.

One of the film's most chilling scenes is set in a quiet room where Irena talks to Jewish friends, anguished over the prospect of giving their young daughter over to unknown Christian rescuers. They fear the separation, that they will never see her again or that she'll be converted -- and that it will have all been done over fears that may be baseless. They had heard, after all, that deportation meant they were going to labor camps. Her intelligence reports say otherwise, Irena finally informs them. The trains packed with Jews are emptied at a place called Treblinka -- a camp without barracks. They have no difficulty grasping the implication -- the camp is a killing center. It has no other function.

Irena Sendler regularly confronted this wrenching task -- namely, getting parents to agree to give up their children -- and she was up to the work. As her history reveals, nothing in life mattered so much as this mission of saving as many doomed as possible. There was, indeed, no other life. Among the things she found it necessary to do -- with the world collapsing all around her and ever worse danger threatening -- was to establish an elaborately coded record of the identity of every child saved, which she buried underground so it would be available to family members who had survived. It was her own way of ensuring that the children she saved would not be lost to their families or their faith.

It's a gorgeous open thread

Off to the park :)

 

Go, breathe, through your nostrils, rejuice, reinvigor. You are going to need all the strength you have.

UPDATE: Thank Stogie! I am stoked! And yeah, I still love the banner :)

UPDATE: BTW, I have continually updated Atlas Tea party coverage with pics, videos and reportage from Atlas readers across the country. If you haven't checked it out recently, please go!

Let's Face an Open Thread

Something really wonderful ......."Let's Face the Music and Dance"..........Nat King Cole

(and Rita, Cyd, Ava, Sophia, Gene, Fred, Cary and Rita, Rita , Rita)

My One and Only Open Thread

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman - My One and Only Love *sigh* drop dead gorgeous (hat tip Preminger).

FRIDAY NIGHT CHILL

Don Miguel by Agustí Fernández piano, Barry Guy double bass, Ramón López drums and percussion

Recorded at Jazzclub Moods, Zurich, March 16, 2007 (thanks to David)

At roughly 2:40 ............. close your eyes

Slinking, sliding into an open thread

Astrud Gilberto - dammi un'idea (summer samba) 1967

Let's Get Lost on an Open Thread

Let's get lost Chet Baker .........it's the Friday night open thread. Whew. (Thanks to Ken)

Yes yes yes Chet, let's get lost.

Now Playing ...... Winehouse

Because I am dancing around the room to this ...and please spare me the sordid details of her squalid drug problems. I don't care. I dig her sound.

Can't Get Me Started on an Open Thread

Billie Holiday, "I can't get started," with the incomparable Lester Young (they were soooooo sweet) and Teddy Wilson.

Pour yourself a stiff one, kick back and close your eyes.

A Kiss of Fire on an Open Thread

Throw back your head and dance with me! F**k 'em all. 

Natacha Poberaj and Jesus Velasquez, "Cafe Dominguez" from "Una noche de tango."

Quiet Stars on an Open Thread

Stan Getz / Astrud Gilberto - Corcovado

The best. If you don't own this record, Getz/Gilberto, get it. The whole thing is ..... perfect.

*Clink*

We'll meet again ........on the other side of an open thread

Think Iran
And now that Bush is out of the White House, the NIE can stop lying to us about Iran's nuclear readiness and give us the actual status of Iran's nuclear readiness -- obviously an almost fully weaponzied Iran. Last year our "best" intel infiltrators lied through their teeth, because they knew Bush said a nuclear Islamic Iran was "unacceptable". They knew the moment of truth was almost upon us.  So they Bushwhacked the White House, and leaked it to The Times with a patently wrong NIE assessment. It was a deliberate act of subterfuge -- a coup on the White House.
But now that you have a Jihad loving President Hussein in the White House -- the straight story can emerge, because everybody knows Obambi ain't bombing anyone (except maybe Israel somewhere down the line).

Tigerhawk had this:

Most political blog readers will remember the storm of controversy that erupted in early December 2007, when a new American "National Intelligence Assessment" claimed that Iran had stopped development of a nuclear weapon in 2003. The New York Times wrote that "[rarely], if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate here." Blogs exploded.

Lefty blogs rejoiced. At the Daily Kos diarists mocked Bush, Cheney, McCain, Romney, and Huckabee for having taken various hawkish positions on the subject. The Booman Tribune claimed vindication, having "spent a lot of electrons over the last year writing to you about a committed and sustained misinformation campaign to suggest that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program." Crooks and Liars wrote that "[i]f it's possible to make Bush look any stupider---the new NIE report on certainly Iran does." At the HuffPo, Jon Soltz declared "World War III plans stymied by National Intelligence Estimate." And so forth. There are literally hundreds of similar posts.

So imagine my interest to see the Los Angeles Times report that the intelligence agencies have reversed themselves again (bold emphasis added):

Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.

In his news conference this week, President Obama went so far as to describe Iran's "development of a nuclear weapon" before correcting himself to refer to its "pursuit" of weapons capability.

Obama's nominee to serve as CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, left little doubt about his view last week when he testified on Capitol Hill. "From all the information I've seen," Panetta said, "I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability."

The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 that was instrumental in derailing U.S. and European efforts to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear program.

Tigerhawk has more, but I part company on his commentary -- but the above is spot on.

67 computers missing from nuclear weapons lab By JOAN LOWY

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico is missing 67 computers, including 13 that were lost or stolen in the past year. Officials say no classified information has been lost.

The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight on Wednesday released a memo dated Feb. 3 from the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration outlining the loss of the computers.

Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos, on Wednesday confirmed the computers were missing and said the lab was initiating a monthlong inventory to account for every computer. He said the computers were a cybersecurity issue because they may contain personal information like names and addresses, but they did not contain any classified information.

Thirteen of the missing computers were lost or stolen in the past 12 months, including three computers that were taken from a scientist's home in Santa Fe, N.M., on Jan. 16, and a BlackBerry belonging to another employee was lost "in a sensitive foreign country," according to the memo and an e-mail from a senior lab manager. ...

UPDATE: Iran will never give in to the US Telegraph (hat tip Banef)

Khomeini's revolution commits his successors to hardline nuclear policies, argues Con Coughlin in a new book

Subterranean Open Thread

Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues

Homesick indeed

You dont need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

Man out of Time on an Open thread

This one is for Wilders

Elvis Costello - Man Out of Time

So this is where he came to hide
When he ran from you
In a private detectives overcoat
And dead mans shoes

The pretty things of knightsbridge
Lying for a minister of state
Is a far cry from the nod and wink
Here at traitors gate

cause the high heel he used to be has been ground down
And he listens for the footsteps that would follow him around

To murder my love is a crime
But will you still love
A man out of time

But for his private wife and kids somehow
Real life becomes a rumour
Days of dutch courage
Just three french letters and a german sense of humour

A fine open thread

BILLIE HOLIDAY 8/12/1957, CBS TV show with Roy Eldridge (tp), Vic Dickenson (tb), Lester Young, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins (ts), Mal Waldron (p) Gerry Mulligan (bari ), Danny Barker (g), Milt Hinton (b), Osie Johnson (d), Billie Holiday (v) Fine and Mellow

It just does not get much sweeter than this ....

After the rain ... an open thread

John Coltrane ........ After the Rain

Click to vote .... vote for Atlas, every 24 hours ..... big kiss ......  until the 13th ...

Love Spencer's picks:

Vote anti-jihad in the Weblog Awards: Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs for Best Conservative Blog; Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury for Best Canadian Blog; Israel Matzav for Best Midsize Blog; Shire Network News for Best Podcast; Melanie Phillips for Best UK Blog; Snapped Shot for Best Photo Blog; and either Martin Kramer, Elder of Ziyon, Fundamentally Freund, or IsraellyCool for Best Middle East or Africa Blog.

You can vote once a day!

EVERYBODY KNOWS ....it's an open thread

Everybody knows .......Leonard Cohen

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that youve been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows youve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that its now or never
Everybody knows that its me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when youve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old black joes still pickin cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the plague is coming
Everybody knows that its moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But theres gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that youre in trouble
Everybody knows what youve been through
From the bloody cross on top of calvary
To the beach of malibu
Everybody knows its coming apart
Take one last look at this sacred heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Give me .....an open thread

G-d give me strength Elvis Costello, Burt Bacharah

Click below for music video

Christmas in NY :)

CLICK BELOW!

Let it Snow on an Open Thread

Sinatra, Let it Snow -- I am outta here. I promise to stay away from the Palis :)

Come Fly on an Open Thread

As you are chillin, kickin back, nursing that martini I am flying above the clouds on my way to the promised land. Baruch Hashem!

Love that nanosecond of ecstasy that crosses Sinatra's face at minute .40

For you ............... an open thread

This .... song. Another Star, Stevie Wonder
For you! (minute 2:25 crushes me. swooning)

A Music Thread ..... Hope

I know Friday night open threads are generally a break from the tsunami of evil crashing in on the West but there was no way -- not tonight, not this week, not when confronted by the face of evil.

Hatikva Itzhak Perlman, John Williams

Click below link for the video

IMAGINE JIHAD!

It's done... finally! GO GET YOURSELF SOME

An Open Thread ....All of it

Dinah Washington, All of me .......baby baby baby

My favorite thing ....an open thread

Coltrane ...........one of my favorite things

Click below for video -- if I keep it on the main page, it slows the load.

Under the Spell of an Open Thread

Nina Simone I Put a Spell on You.

Now go get yours.

Angus Dei .... an open thread

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir  Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei (Basílica El Escorial)

Click below for video

Somewhere .........

Sarah Vaughn.
Happy New Year. Off the radar screen for a bit

No Blues on an Open Thread

Miles Davis No Blues 1964 (The Tonight Show)

Forgive me for not running the Friday night music thread. I was traveling ......  pour yourself a stiff one, kick back and chill. These could be the last weeks of a post racial, free America. 

Seeing ..... an open thread

damn i love this woman.

Speaking of Imperial Russia ...an Open Thread

Rimsky-Korsakov -  Scheherazade. Like this blog ....a book of One Thousand and One Nights.

While still Associate Publisher at the Observer and pregnant with Red, I listened to this CD on a endless loop in the office - every day for nine months. I actually went out to lunch one day and gave birth a couple of hours later (assisted by the much despised pitocin). That's why when the libtards dis Palin and talk about her  being unable to "do it all", I am personally insulted. They haven't a clue, living off the fat of the land for as long as they have, they are incompetent.

Scheherazade on an endless loop -- it explains a lot about Red's personality 

Click below for video.

I'm the Happiest Girl in the whole USA

heh

Come fly with me on an open thread

Yeah baby .... off to Minneapolis this weekend so was in the mood for some swingin Sinatra.

Life's a beach ....

Richard Diebenkorn, Beach with Umbrellas,1958-59. Oil on composition board. Lent by the Santa Cruz Island Foundation. Credit: Santa Cruz Island Foundation. Photograph: William B.Dewey © Estate of Richard Diebenkorn.

It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away.

UPDATE: I'd dance with him ..... in  a heartbeat (hat tip Cindy)

Dream a little dream of an open Thread

Mama Cass "Dream a little dream of me ...."

UPDATE: lol

Cover Girl

For Atlas readers that are nocturnal (uh, like yours truly), Turner Classic Movies is showing Cover Girl with Rita Hayworth at 11:30 pm (Eastern time) - right after Singing in the Rain (cinematic heaven).  If you don't have Turner Classic Movies, call your cable company and raise hell. It's the only channel you need when you have to escape the news and the history channel.

Songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin, including the classic "Long Ago and Far Away". The film won the 1944 Academy Award for best musical scoring.

If you love Hayworth, she was never lovelier. This movie is dear to me. I would watch it as a kid and being utterly transported. Not profound just the stuff of dreams of a young girl.

There's more, check out video - click on "CONTINUE"

Georgia on my mind .... an open thread

Friday night music thread.

Ray Charles ........ Georgia of course.

An empty open thread

This house is empty now Burt Bacharach & Elvis Costello, one of my favorite collaborations. I love this record ........eveyr cut off the album.

"Does the extinguished candle care about the darkness"?

Late Night Sunday Music Thread .... terribly irresistible

I love the way you're breaking my heart Peggy Lee

Click below to "CONTINUE" to viww (videos slow down the main page)