Terence, this is stupid stuff

That's all I have to say about the Killian Memo nonsense. I don't care whether they're forged or not, as I find Bush's National Guard service irrelevant in the face of his massive failures during his four years in office. All of the attention, from both lefty and righty bloggers, strikes me as absurd. I also don't care about Dan Rather. Seriously, how many people with an ounce of intelligence really look to network news anchors for quality journalism these days? So, instead of writing post after post on the memos, Rather, and Bush's national guard service, I'm going to post something completely unrelated (or is it?) to all of that: the last stanza of the Housman Poem from which I stole the title of this post, just because I love it, and reading such poetry distracts me from all of this election-year nonsense. Hopefully it will provide a moment of respite for you, too.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.