THOSE WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY,
THEY FIRST MAKE MAD

The origin of this little Greeky proverb is mysterious and misattributed -- we can at least give this English version to Longfellow. But there's something incredibly comic about the fact that one Latinized rendering is 'Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius.' That looks vaguely like bad Latin to me [I await correction] but what better title for an article on the overreaching arrogance of the sitting President than a line that contains the words 'Prius' and 'dementat'.

And indeed, up until the past couple of weeks one might have mistaken President O's flushing of untold millions down the plug-hole of so-called 'green energy' (you remember green energy and green jobs -- the grand scheme that has brought Spain to 24% unemployment) to be his craziest of all extreme crazy programs perpetrated under his administration.

But now, after a full-on assault against Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment to the Constitution, Mr. Obama has earned this well-written proclamation nailed to the door of today's American Thinker, by J.R. Dunn.

Money quotes:

...he has struck what was surely intended to be a lethal blow against the oldest organization on earth -- an organization with something on the order of a billion members, with a cadre of hundreds of thousands of highly trained and dedicated personnel, and a history of overcoming political threats that make Obama look like a kindergartner.

...a man of vast though superficial sophistication and little insight who has punched all the tickets available to him in his epoch and culture and truly believes there is nothing else. And now this man, afraid of revealing his own college transcripts, thinks he can take on the Church of Peter, founded a millennium before the appearance of any nation now existing on this earth...

History has its own rules that are not our rules. One of them appears to state that a man who overreaches himself will fall in proportion to the extent that he has overreached. Obama has overreached himself as far as any political figure in the American record, and his fall will be proportionate. He cannot avoid this or mitigate it. His action against the Church is an example of that small class of acts that cannot be uncommitted.

Ahem.

How many divisions does the Pope have?

The B-16 bomber, powered by Conclave!


J-P II -- Santo Subito!

I'll see your freakin' UN, and raise you a World Youth Day, Madrid 2011


Sisters of Life

MOP's, Jamaica

Friars of Renewal, The Bronx

Dominicans of St. Cecilia

Missionaries of Charity


etc., etc., and so forth.................................................

Ahem.

JEFFERSON, MADISON, ADAMS, & CO:

GET THE HELL OUT OF THE ROAD


We knew this was true, but even I am surprised that the Naked Emperor is so incredibly naked.




Apparently Madame Justice Gulch finds the Constitution kind of an obstacle too.



Oh great! She invokes the Canadian Charter of Rights and Entitlements! Egypt is doomed!

Is it just me, or did these people not take some oath or something, about upholding and DEFENDING the Constitution of the U.S.of A.? (Unless, of course, Justice Gulch only used the revised and abbreviated (pukey, weenie, New Castrati) 1990 version, which dropped the "defend" and added some drivel about the poor and the rich -- I smell the ICEL at work...)

THE EISENHOWER MEMORIAL PROPOSAL:

IT'S SO CRAPPY ITS CRAPPINESS HAS ITS OWN WEBSITE


Version 1: All Pompeii ruins à la mall parking lot, with Stonehenge center


Frank Gehry, one of the two 'hottest' modern architects in the modern world (along with that cheery old soul, Daniel Libeskind, who contributed a pointy tumor to Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum), has put on his tin-foil hat and come up with a design that resembles nothing so much as the underpinnings of an unfinished overpass.

It is (a) ugly, (b) meaningless, (c) appears to be constructed out of the same kind of cheesy materials that go into too many apartment blocks, only to rust out and look like they're crumbling within a decade, and (d) unrelated in any obvious way to its subject or the period of history that he shaped.

The remaining Eisenhower family hates it.

Join them! The website tells you what you can do about it.

Here's some more trash talk on this trashy 'Deconstructivist' design.

[hat-tip Daily Caller]


Version 2: Fewer purposeless columns, more 'minimum security prison exercise yard' appeal, Stonehenge knocked over


[tip of the beret to Arch Daily 'the world's most visited architecture website', where the first three comments on the article read:

-- Zzz

-- building a memorial for one person is so 19th century. get over it...

-- wait, there's going to be an eisenhower memorial? what in heaven's name FOR?


But, you know, artists are so much more sensitive than the rest of us. What's one charging horde of Nazis more or less, huh?

REJECTING THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE
IS AN ACT OF NATIONAL INSANITY




I didn't say it. This guy did.

But on behalf of both nations, I agree.

THE COPY OF NEWSWEEK YOU MIGHT CONSIDER BUYING

Over at RedState they're soliciting photo-shopped parodies of the infamous current issue of Newsweek magazine. Check them out. These are my personal favourites:

SPIRIT OF AMERICA

Self-explanatory.



President Bush gave recognition to Spirit of America and its founder Jim Hake, but never spoke out publicly about what he knew of their work. HUGE MISTAKE. Back then, all Americans wanted to know what they could do to help the war effort, and Mr. Bush said almost nothing.

President Obama shows no evidence of even knowing about Spirit of America, or any of the other civilian programs to give aid to people living under Islamist tyranny -- and if he did know, drawing attention to their work would not fit his strategy of retreat and kow-tow. Now Americans are depressed about foreign entanglements, forgetful of the threats against their well-being, and fearful for their own economic futures.

We'll survive all that (I hope), and there will be plenty of room for the absolutely amazing work of Spirit of America or Operation International Children and others. So dig in, cough up, hand over, speak out, and change the world one little warm kid at a time.

WHO'S THE BANE NOW?

This is just too funny: Newt is telling his PAC to fix or withdraw their film on the evils of Bain Capital under Mitt Romney's tenure, because it contains some, er, lies. But who is the real villain?

Who really turfed people out of jobs in Marianna, FL, AFTER Bain sold the successfully re-structured company? Who bought Unimac from Bain, shut the whole operation down and moved to Wisconsin?


Why, it was that most notoriously cut-throat of venture capital operations, 'Teachers Private Capital, the private-equity arm of the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan', says the Wall Street Journal. That's right folks! The Ontario [that's CANADA] public school teachers' union -- those dog-eat-dog capitalists who own pieces of international airports around the the world, and who just sold their majority share in the Toronto Maple Leafs, because they do NOT like LOSERS.

So Bain helped the workers recover, get raises and promotions, and have a better life. Then Ontario Teachers (because it's all for the children, right?) laid them all off and took their jobs to another state.

[hat-tip to the Wall Street Journal -- subscriber only online, but trust me, I read it in the dead tree, and it's all there]

The NewtPAC's anti-Bain film trailer is here. It's short, but there are enough clichés to satisfy anyone's appetite for cheesy self-parody worthy of Saturday Night Live. I kept waiting for that nasty banker Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life to pop up, pulling George Bailey's money out of his newspaper.

Who is the 'bane' indeed?

OK AMERICA --

PLAYTIME'S OVER

Mitt takes the New Hampshire primary with gobs of votes. Now can we please move on to a state where the grown-ups are allowed to vote without proof of mental instability? -- voters who might have a glimmer of an idea that Ron Paul is totally batsh#t crazy, and John Huntsman is themost sanctimonious bore since Al Gore? Huh?

Unbelievable. And I predict, it ain't gonna hold. If it does, I'm moving to Canada.

Oh wait.... I already......y'know.


ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME, NEW HAMPSHIRE?

WHEN WORDS FAIL....

RAMIREZ ROCKS IT

Michael Ramirez has to be one of the finest satirical artists in the history of satirical art, and I'm talking all the way back to its 18th-century invention by such folks as Ghezzi, Hogarth, Rowlandson, and company.

He had recently been especially eloquent on certain unspeakable developments from the within the turgid imperium of Demander-in-Chief Barack Obama, as follows:




And, lest we forget:



Revel in the further wealth of Ramirez, Pulitzer Prize winner and contributor to Investor's Business Daily, here.

Buy his book.

RICK ROCKS IT

Iowa caucuses still tighter than a tick, but get seriously goosed by the little whiney guy on the end in all the debates. Rick Santorum comes from the far rear position to probably win the night, intruding himself into the coronation process -- will he be the Not-Mitt we've been waiting for? Open your wallets and fund the contrary voice for as long as it can be heard above or among the fray -- the genuine so-con with impeccable pro-life creds, who, by the way, could be made even more good-looking by standing next to Marco Rubio.............................

P.S. Dear Rick: Lose the sweater. Totally nerd.

2012 [updated]


Back in the olden days I used to sit alone by the Christmas tree (the family having packed it in) as one year passed into the next, and write down my reflections, usually melancholy, about the onward march of time. Later this habit passed from ink and paper to electronic media, but the ritual remained the same.

This year I decided not to think. I cast about on the internet for various things, went to Facebook and enjoyed the 6.5 minutes of a fine Te Deum a friend had posted, and then turned on the TV to see if there was anything worth watching before calling it a day and a year.

As luck (or something else) would have it, one station was playing what is probably an appropriate choice of film as we face the challenges of 2012: The Two Towers, part deux of the Lord of the Rings trilogy -- the one where adventure turns to near despair. I was tired and wondered if I had it in me to commit to watching out the end of it, since it was just at the moment when the Orcs, riding their bat-&-boar-faced wolverine/hyena/dingo-like Wargs, attack the almost defenseless Rohirrim. But I was drawn into the action, having had in mind for much of the day the prospect of the Western World backed into a corner like the denizens of Helm's Deep.

This desperate confrontation is always chilling and draining to watch, more for the palpable despair among the bravest of warriors than for the violence of the battle itself. Pile up a few of the day's global headlines in recent months, and one feels a similar sense of "the end of all things" looming closely as the fatter and less industrious hobbits and trolls of Europe and North America scramble about and squabble over acorns.

What just months ago might have had the potential for being the bold stand of the Fellowship against the tide of chaos -- that is, if you'll bear with me, the field of Republican Presidential aspirants preparing to face off against Obama -- risks devolving into a nasty quarrel among trolls and garden gnomes, all too small to reach the stature of the contested office.

Surely none of them so small as the incumbent -- small in character and empathy and imagination, if not in power and raw ambition. Small and bloodless and ideologically calculating while politically obtuse. Where we needed an Aragorn, or at least of Faramir of some ilk, to stand against this chilly, feckless little golem, we may have to make do with some blustering troll or wannabe elf all wrapped up in a shiny foil wrapper, bruised and tatty from a primary smackdown. Yuck.

Leaving aside all these cutesie little metaphors and analogs, what the replay of Helm's Deep really brings most sharply to mind is the image of the seemingly endless waves of slathering, blood-starved, malconceived Orcs, descending upon the noble remnant with its back against the wall. It was an image branded upon the turn of the year 2005/6, and again 2008/9, and once again suggests itself now in precisely the same terms.

Once again, the ORC, in all its threatening savagery, does NOT stand for the Nazis or the Taliban or the Muslim brotherhood or the drug lords, the pirates, or even the Democrats -- it never did. As it ever was, the ORC is the embodiment of the LIE.

I mourned its total triumph in 2008, even though, in a sense, the lies of 2005 were more insidious. The lies of 2008 were gargantuan, bloated, and almost comical in their obviousness, but in the end they have done more damage -- and if they are not laid to rest within a year's time, their consequences may take generations to undo.

Yet here we are, poised for another round of assaults by the armies of the LIE, prepared to double down their efforts and dig their roots deeper into the public landscape, out of stubborn refusal to admit their own madness of four years ago. When I read back to my 2008 Orc-based post, it almost seems naive in its under-estimation of the potential for the official and auxiliary (press) Obama administrations to wreak havoc on the American nation through hapless and rigid adherence to perverse ideology, and through its ruthlessly thuggish application. It is hard to fathom how anyone so fundamentally vacant could turn out, in his own way, to be so effective.

And if we thought we saw the Year of the Lie in full flower in 2008, we ain't seen nothin' yet. The pundits always say it, but this year it is true that we are in the political fight of our lives, and the future of the American nation (and that of all its allies and dependents) hangs in the balance. The stakes have not been higher since the Cold War got hot. The hordes are poised to descend, having laid down covering fire from their bunkers for the past three years -- sample it here among the Top Ten 2011 examples of Media Malfeasance. It's only going to get uglier.

UPDATE:
Further on the Media Malfeasance theme: wise fellow Victor Davis Hanson reflects on some "No News" stories of the recent past.

BREAKING NEWS:

KIM JONG ILL

no, wait---------


KIM JONG DEAD!

[I gleefully join the ranks of thousands around the globe who will make this too obvious joke today.]


Anybody got some cheese and crackers, and a boat? I bet there's 25 million North Koreans who'd really love a snack. And maybe some shoes and a coat. And electricity.


Sorry, President Obama -- one less guy to practice your bow on.













Oh my -- the world is full of surprises. Why can't we just get back to the business of campaigning? Why all these distractions?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS DIES --

GETS THE SURPRISE OF HIS LIFE


A noble mind, selectively o'erthrown, has found its final rest. We mourn the premature death of writer Christopher Hitchens, and will miss the thundering prose which continued to flow even when the physical voice had been stilled by disease. A verbal pugilist for the ages, reasoned and clear-thinking in so many areas save one, the one in which he was inexplicably blind and reasoned like a toddler, that of religion and God.

Oh, that we could hear what he has to say today!!!! Actually, I think he will be quieted and meditative. And I hope he will find that, contra his own book title, God is not only Great, but He is infinitely merciful, provided one asks humbly for mercy -- and nobody as smart as Hitchens could fail to see now where and how badly he got it wrong, and beg his editor's indulgence.

Mother Teresa, I expect, will even speak up for him, and advance the idea that, on occasion, Hitchens unwittingly did "something beautiful for God." Who knew?

Christopher Hitchens
1949-2011

Requiescat in pace (in spite of your best efforts...)

SAY BUT THE WORD,
AND MY SOUL SHALL BE HEALED


We like to chuckle if we toss out the hackneyed pseudo-profundity, "Today is the first day of the rest of my life" -- but sometimes the line is a statement of simple truth.

It happened a couple of weeks ago , at an otherwise unremarkable First Sunday of Advent Mass. In a quiet but definitive transformation, 45 years of substandard vernacular prayer were consigned to the ash-pot of history, and the English-speaking Catholic world welcomed back into use a mode of expression that at least attempts to praise and petition God with the humility and graciousness He is owed.

For those of us old enough to remember the days of a Catholic world united by the Tridentine Latin Mass, it was a long-awaited return to what had, for 45 years, stubbornly remained the norm, even as it disappeared from use; and it was a clear reminder of the suppressed truth that, back in the pre-vernacular days, those of us who attended Mass with a missal in our hands and read all the well-translated English on the right-hand page while the priest recited the Latin printed on the left, were engaging in ACTIVE PARTICIPATION on a scale barely imaginable to the Catholic who knows only the post-conciliar Church.

After 45 years, I stood ready to feel the balm of restoration when I first uttered aloud (on purpose, not by accident, as has often happened over the decades) the words "And with your spirit" in response to "The Lord be with you." My moment came -- and I blew it. The Novus Ordo reflex proved too powerful. I shocked myself. And it's a shock I have undergone several times since over the past two weeks -- damn! Some old habits die so hard.

[sidebar -- old Catholic joke: Priest steps up to the pulpit, looks around and fiddles with the mic, taps it, and mutters under his breath, "There's something wrong with this microphone." Mind-numbed Novus Ordrones reflexively chime in, "And also with you."]

However, some habits are older and die harder than others. When it came time to respond to "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world," I was primed and ready to say what I have always said at this moment, no matter what ICEL* monstrosity was printed on the Novus Ordo page: "Lord, I am not worthy that You [or Thou] should come under my roof; say but the word and my soul shall be healed."

This Biblically-based prayer [Matthew 8, Luke 7] makes use of concrete imagery, so favoured by Christ Himself, to reference the body as both the temple of the Holy Spirit and the physical receptacle of the Holy Eucharist. The mal-translated abstract banality "Oh Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed" is, to my mind, the ultimate embodiment of the *International Commission on English in the Liturgy at its most perverse. And never in the 45 years since ICEL put the liturgy into a choke-chain of "dynamic equivalence" have I been able to utter their version of that particular prayer.

So on the First Sunday of Advent, 2011, I stood ready to proclaim the old words aloud, and no longer be the one muttering something else under my breath. I got through "Lord, I am not worthy..." and I couldn't go on. I choked, and tears filled my eyes. I felt the balm of healing pour out over a near-half-century wound, but it could not diminish the emotional pang of realizing how much I wished my parents could have lived to see this day.

Heck, I wish they could have lived to attend their own funerals! Five years, and one year, ago we sang each of them out into the next world with funeral Masses in the musical and liturgical traditions they loved so dearly and had been denied for half their lives. (They were Novus Ordo, but we had full co-operation from the celebrants regarding the traditional forms and aesthetics.) My father was in the grip of advancing dementia when my mother died, but he was able to take some comfort from the beautiful Latin ordinaries and hymns, including a portion of the Dies Irae, which we sang for her sending forth. As his dementia worsened over the next four years, and he got to the point where he could barely identify family members as anything more than a familiar face, he was still able to join in with the Missa de Angelis, Gloria VIII, and Credo III when he was taken to churches where the tradition was being revived -- despite their long absence from his weekly Mass experience, they were burned into the deepest recesses of his memory, and he called them up effortlessly.

But the ghastly, grating, anti-euphonious "And also with you," along with all its nasty little ICEL-manufactured companions ["Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us"] dogged my parents through most of the second half of their lives, and never, ever ceased to irritate.

On this day, however -- the first of days, Advent, 2011 -- a half-century's festering wound began to heal.

It is only a first step on the road to healing, and it is only a particle ingredient of the balms needed everywhere in the world to heal a thousand other festering wounds of every sort. But it is a start. And it was wonderful to stand next to two more generations of our family, one that is open and accepting of what is, to them, a new path; and the other so young that she will grow up knowing only the restored prayers and nothing of the paltry substitutions which gave miserly insult to the debt of worship for generations before. [And she will never get that old Catholic joke about the microphone - hooray!]

It was a good day. And despite all the tribulations that come with the bonds between parents and children, I was grateful to feel the tugs and jolts of those transformative moments in church, grateful to the parents who were the reason I learned to care about such things.

May the peace of the Lord be with them always.
And with their spirits.


Addendum: seems like an appropriate moment to re-post an oldie but a goodie:
Recovering the "Merry" in Christmas from 2006.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING DOWN THERE
FROM UP HERE, WHERE IT ISN'T THANKSGIVING

And here's the greatest Thanksgiving comedy bit in history. Bon appetit.

[UPDATE: Both videos below only visible through Mozilla Firefox]

Sometimes I could just grab Stephen Colbert by his crisp lapels and shake him, but other times he is completely redeemed because he takes the insanity of the present day by its rumpled lapels, head-butts it into submission, and

NAILS IT.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - The 1%
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Boo-yah.


And while we're at it, kudos to Jon Stewart for stuffing it to the Occupants. Biff, pow, it's over.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

ALL PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS DREAM OF WRITING SOMETHING OF
LASTING SIGNIFICANCE


Then they wake up, and crank out some a bunch of cr#p.

THE RICH GET RICHER

I AM
THE 1%

[Maybe even the .001%]


Tough economic times for most of us, but the Pelosi wealth has grown 62% in the past year.

On the other hand, maybe that whole 1% thing just applies to the amount of her original face that's left. Heh.

60 Minutes is curious about where La Principessa of San Francisco gets her cash, and whether she's had a little legislative conflict of interest from time to time. Wow. Somebody in the MSM is actually CURIOUS about something other than Republican peccadillos. Who knew?

WHITE FEATHER

WHITE FLAG















PRESIDENT OBAMA HANGS "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"
BANNER ON FORMAL SKEDADDLE FROM IRAQ

That's it, we're done, ring down the curtain on the Iraq War, the President says it's time to pull the plug. They'll all be home by Christmas. (Where have we heard that before?)

The Amazing Shrinking President has been madly pinning battle ribbons on his own chest, with the take-down of Osama (a job well done), the bludgeoning-to-death of Ghadaffi (he really wants that on his resumé?), and the official withdrawal of all troops from Iraq (except for the ones that will be staying..... just enough to guard the embassy, not enough to defend themselves in the event of an Occupy Al-Rashid Street disturbance).

Interestingly, right up until the last minute, the Obama administration was working feverishly (or trying to give the appearance of working feverishly) NOT to have to withdraw all troops, but to leave a sufficient number to continue training and being alert for the security of the fledgling democracy Americans and Iraqis have sacrificed so much to build. That was (theoretically) the goal of negotiations with the Al-Malaki government -- right up until it wasn't, and we are all now to congratulate the President on not reaching that agreement. Even the New York Times smells a rat, and knows this has been a royal "cock-up".

Further and more incisive analysis of this sucking-up-to-the-left-wing-base gambit was provided by Max Boot at Commentary. Money quote:
Far from being cause for celebration, Obama’s announcement that we will keep only 150 U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of the year–down from nearly 50,000 today–represents a shameful failure of American foreign policy that risks undoing all the gains that so many Americans, Iraqis, and other allies have sacrificed so much to achieve. The risks of a catastrophic failure in Iraq now rise appreciably.

Connecticut Independent Joe Lieberman is spittin' nails.

Lefty CNN yapper Fareed Zakaria knows a diplomatic flop when he sees one.

Even the Hawaii Reporter can't bring itself to crow that a "local boy makes good."

Just for the record...

THE WAR IN IRAQ WAS OVER IN 2008, AND WE WON

So said Reporter-to-the-World Michael Yon, and if he says it you can take it to the bank. (Well, after 2008 maybe the bank's not such a good idea, but you get my drift.) Anyway, we won.

What we've been doing for the three years since then is WINNING THE PEACE.

So it's the PEACE that the 44th President has officially withdrawn from. Great move, dude.

Why?, you may ask. Well, it wasn't good for Iraq. It's not good for the United States. It's going to be crap for Libya, Egypt, Syria, and all the other kids in the 'hood.

I guess Obama is one of those unromantic types who, after he screws you, all he can ask is, "Was it good for me?"

We'll get back to him on that when he's forced to propose putting troops back in in 2012 -- it could happen.

FLORENCE ITALY HOTELS

HOTEL DAVANZATI

SUPERBO! MAGNIFICO! BELLISSIMO!


I'm just trying to create an effective Google reference here for the hotel we stayed in during our recent excursion to Florence and Rome. Just today I received an invitation to rate our hotel in Rome, and I did my best to be nice, although our experience in Florence was so fine that I went into Rome with a chip on my shoulder, seeing every flaw.

In fact, the Hotel Alimandi Vaticano was pretty good -- a bit overpriced, I think, and much further from the gates to St. Peter's than I had thought (everything looks smaller on a map). But anything would look second-rate compared to the warm welcome and familial hospitality of the [wait for it...]

HOTEL DAVANZATI

After the inexplicable decision to DRIVE to Florence -- on Italian highways, with Italian drivers, culminating in the plate of spaghetti which is the road-map of medieval/renaissance Firenze -- we screeched into the available pocket of cobblestone in front of our hotel on the Via Porta Rossa, and my by-then-frazzled chauffeur & spousal unit mounted the 26 steps, rode the phone-booth sized elevator (we came to call it the Tardis), and arrived at the front desk in melt-down mode. From behind the desk the dapper second-generation owner, Fabrizio, thrust out his hand and welcomed his customer by name, and my husband was won over instantaneously. From there is just got better.

Our luggage was lugged upstairs by the staff, our car was whisked away for safe-keeping, and we were ushered into our cool, crisp, comfortable room with the giant tempurpedic bed. Calm suddenly reigned. We were soon refreshed enough to walk to the Duomo for evening Mass, we found a light supper on the way back, and became gradually aware of how perfectly placed we were for an enjoyable stay in this amazing city.

All this, and Happy Hour too. Italians have this way of not eating dinner until 8:00-9:00 p.m. -- we seldom made use of it, opting instead for a good lunch and an evening snack. But to help us non-Italians through the pause before the dinner hour, the Hotel Davanzati puts on the jazz recording, dims the lights, and opens up the breakfast room and lobby for Happy Hour, 6:30-7:30, with Prosecco, Chianti, and munchies, ON THE HOUSE! Prosecco, I have discovered, has incredible curative properties, especially below the ankles. A-a-a-h-h-h.

We were only in Firenze for four days, and could only make plans for what we need to do on the second visit, sometime in the near future, but enjoyed it immensely (oh the peace of the San Marco Convent -- a surprise in every box!), with all its pleasures enriched by the comforts and hospitality of the Hotel Davanzati. And, to no great surprise, the hotel is right next door to the Palazzo Davanzati, which is AWESOME. A medieval must-see.

SUSAN SARANDON, THEOLOGIAN,
WEIGHS IN ON THAT 'NAZI', POPE BENEDICT XVI

Who could argue? After all, she was raised Catholic, and people like that know everything.


In a 2009 interview with pop-religion site Belief.net, Sarandon gave her views on the fostering of World Peace. Said she:

I think it really starts with your neighbors. I think it starts with your everyday life and living as Christ did, in a loving way and a respectful way.

Then, in an interview this week at the Hamptons Film Festival, in a huge burst of love and respect, Ms. Sarandon gave her sage opinion of certain Catholic leaders. She recalled that:

...she sent the pope a copy of the anti death penalty book, Dead Man Walking, authored by Sister Helen Prejean. Sarandon starred in the 1995 big-screen adaptation.

"The last one," she said, "not this Nazi one we have now."

Notice the "we" -- still conveniently calling on the Catholic creds she has long since abandoned (divorced in 1979, never married to two different fathers of her children).

Asked during the 2008 election cycle what Jesus would do, Sister Sarandon opined as how "Jesus would be very supportive of John Edwards." You cannot make this stuff up.

Later, on the subject of The One (B.H. Obama), La Sarandon was heard to say, “He is a community organizer like Jesus was. And now, we’re a community and he can organize us.” Just a dream come true, right folks?

Back in that Belief.net piece, Sarandon waxed eloquent on matters religious:

I've always been very resistant to organized religion. Because, somehow, when religion becomes institutionalized, all the guys that started it that were so brilliant …their words get used to exclude other people. I've always felt that institutionalized religion never really made the transition from the words of Christ, or the words of Buddha, or the words of Confucius.

I believe in the power of a higher divine of some sort. But I think that is probably what informs all my decisions is the idea of the divine in each person. And I try to act according to that belief...

I believe in the divinity of every human being. And I try to live my life with as much compassion and kindness toward that end, of respecting other people...

How do you incorporate those beliefs into your everyday spirituality?

I think you lead by example more than just words. I would hope that my kids have seen me in action, protecting and helping those that have been less fortunate than I have been. I hope that they see that in my daily struggles with making my own moral decisions that I try to be as thoughtful as possible.

But, mostly, I think you lead by example because as your kids get older, preaching to them doesn't really work.

Uh, yeah -- when your kids get older, sometimes you're not really in a position to preach at all.

Susan reveals that Jack, Miles and Eva “still haven’t watched” most of her films. She elaborates, “Not because of embarrassment but just not wanting to see their mum as somebody different — that’s hard for them.”

Of course there are countless other ways to embarrass your children, and it’s something Susan says she does “constantly.” The 63-year-old actress says she’s “given up being defensive about it,” noting, “if you’re breathing, you’re an embarrassment.”

To that end, Susan says she began opting out of filming nude scenes once the kids began to ask tough questions.

“They’ll point out something I did earlier and ask, ‘Did it never occur to you that you might have a child?’” she recalls. “I say, ‘No, it didn’t, really.’ But I accept them; they have to learn to accept me.”

Still, confusion has — at times — persisted, particularly when the kids were younger. “If I kissed someone in a film, my son used to ask, ‘Did you have sex in that movie?’ and I’d say, ‘No, we just kissed,’ yet he considered it sexual. But that is the dance, because sexuality exists around children. From the time they’re walking, they’re completely sexual. I remember having to explain to both my sons that we couldn’t get married.”

E-e-e-e-w.

Yes, when someone like this says the Pope is a Nazi, the whole world is watching -- the whole world is watching -- the hole weird is witching -- the held wold is whamming......... ya-a-a-w-n.

BUDDABING

Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online, weighs in on whether or not the President is onto something when he calls the country "soft". Money quote:

Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really?

McCain can be a pain, but the history remains.


KABOOM

Better dead than..... well, just about anything.

The report is in that Anwar al-Awlaki has been more forcibly redistributed than a capitalist's profit-margin, bombed to smithereens in his adopted home of Yemen. Yeah man. A truly poisonous traitor if ever there was one.

Apparently the CIA led the way with the strike -- Peaches Petraeus settles comfortably into his new chair.

New Mexico-born terrorist leader meets his 72 virgins.

Requiescat in fragmentis.

NOTHING SAYS HISTORY LIKE ACTUAL HISTORY

Why didn't they have this cartoon thing when I was in school?

KNIVES, OUT

JOURNALISTS FIND THEMSELVES DOING THEIR
2008 CANDIDATE RESEARCH

Even Christiane Amanpour can't cover this turd-cake with cream cheese frosting

ANNIVERSARY REFLECTIONS ROUND-UP:

DEPT. OF "SAD BUT TRUE"


Mark Steyn @ National Review Online

George Will @ Washington Post

Mark Judge @ The Daily Caller


On the other hand, a word from a future President:




And even finer words from a former President, eschewing the fake eye-contact of the teleprompter, speaking from his notes on the podium, speaking from his heart:




REMINDERS OF OUR BETTER SELVES

Linked here at Pajamas Media, courtesy of Bruce Bawer

[apropos of not very much, Bawer is an American writer who is gay, and who moved to Amsterdam and then to Oslo in the belief that society in those places was much more educated, sophisticated, free, and tolerant than that of the United States -- boy, did he get a wrong number. He has since re-thought that thesis, and written While Europe Slept and Surrender.]

Excellent round-up of links of all sorts via the Anchoress