Yuck!

Okay the new workers are on vacation so how would I review them?

My fears about lack-luster Democrats that are not really up to the task of forcefully taking the nation in a better direction are proving well founded. The Democrats are still acting like they are the minority. They need to give the President an ultimatum on Iraq, keep the House and Senate open 24/7 until the President gives in or goes home. Furthermore there needs to be a unification of national action from Congress and the grass routes. A million people in the streets camped on the mall makinig noise would help. They also need to tell it the way it is. The surge sucks! It is not working, not even a little bit.

We need to redirect our war in a new direction, and I do not mean Iran. This campaign was misguided and sloppily put together and there is nothing that can be done about it now. Sometimes you have to redeploy and start over with a new plan.

Republicans have mental difficulties

Why do Republicans hate people who are actually qualified to be President? Why do they insist on pretenders? People who are not leaders but play them on TV. The Republican party actually has some talent in the running and they go for Fred Thompson? They are fools! I really think Republicans are mentally challenged. How can I respect a party that ignores talent? Is it that they are so full of in-bred-jeds that the only people they feel comfortable with are “backee-chew’n” hick-wanna-bees? God help us if Earl The Cable Guy ran for President. I am sure a sizable percentage of the misanthropic idiots on the Republican right would vote for him. I think that all those red stated morons have taken one too many tornado flung 2x4’s to the head.

Thank you Paris Hilton!

We almost had to pay attention to the G-8 summit but thankfully you have turned our silly heads again and we are all indignant over you getting house (mansion) arrest instead of the slammer. Oh and then back to jail again like a bimbo-yoyo . kudos to you Paris and to the other "hot"" news items in America... The pastor-killing wife may go free in 60 days, and the DA says Kansas Teen was strangled! Oh yes and did the dad drown the kid for cash?

Let me get this straight. We have 150,000 troops in a war, are over a financial barrel with China, we have Russia threatening to start up the cold war again, and the imagration debate is ended in a Homer Simpson "Doh!" moment. I guess the media wants us not to fret the small stuff while we myopically focus on Hilton and all other loonies.

"Bread and spectacle people! Bread and spectacle!"

Mercia revisited...again

This is a review of a book entitled “Mercia and the making of England”, by Ian Walker. This is the first and perhaps only book dedicated to telling the story of that shadowy Angle Kingdom. Walker takes great pains to note that Mercia, due to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle being a West Saxon affair, had its history played down or passed over. Walker try’s to redress this in his book.

However…..

As a student of this kingdom I would say that Walker’s book leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, an aspect of Mercian history that is fairly well documented is the late pagan period of King Penda and his dynasty, arguably the longest dynasty in Mercia. Furthermore Walker, for reasons unknown, himself passes over Penda’s brother Peada, his sons Wulfhere and Aethelred. Wulfhere has just about as much written of him in the Chronicle as does Offa. He also myopically focuses on what he calls the C and B dynasties of Cenwulf and Burhred. Though he is quite capable of postulating ideas about who was related to whom by the first letter of their name, something I find silly, he totally ignores contemporary Mercian royal lineage lists as if they are all nonsense or made up.

He says nothing of Offa’s connection to Penda or Offa’s predecessor Aethelbold. Yet he try’s to show how king Cenwulf, who followed Offa after Offa’s son Ecgfrith died, was really related to Beornred who had been deposed by Offa. I know that all this sounds cryptic and horribly confusing. And it is to anyone who does not know the situation of 7th-9th century Mercia. Walker, in his illustrated Mercian lineages only shows these two C and B dynasties. This is ridiculous to me since the previous dynasty of Penda was the one that forged a unified Mercia that was internally stable enough to allow his descendants to take over most of Britain.

Walkers book, in my opinion is superficial where it needs to by deep and try’s to be deep where there is no depth to plumb. This is not to totally dis his book. There are some really astute points to be made about the Mercian~Wessex alliance against the Vikings and also about what you can tell about a king and kingdom by its coinage. But really it offered no great insight or information that I did not already know.

Here is some information that is not in this so-called book about Merica. Using Walker’s letter idea here is my “P” dynasty:

K. Penda died 655
His brother was Eowa who was father of Alweo, who was the father of K. Aethelbald 716-757
Eowa’s other son Cneba was the father of Thringsfirth, who was the father of K. Offa 757-796
Penda’s son Peada became king in 655-659
Penda’s other son Wulfhere became king in 659-675
Penda’s last son Aethelred became king in 675-704
Aethelred’s son Cenred then became king 704-709
When Cenred abdicated Aethelred’s other son Ceolred became king 709-716
After Ceolred died, “in a drunken frenzy” according to Boniface, his cousin Aethelbald, who was in exile retunred and took the throne and reigned for 40 years.
When Aethelbald was finally murdered another clan tried in vane to take the throne but was gotten rid of by another member of the P dynasty namely Offa Thringsfrithson, son of Cneba, son of Eowa, brother of Penda, who himself was the son of K. Pybba, the first true king of Mercia!!!!!

So Ian Walker you can talk to me whenever you want to have a discussion of Mercia.

My sources are:
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 9th-10th Century
Historia Ecclesiastica Anglorum by Bede 7th Century
Historia Brittonum by 9th Century