Welcome Dogans and Doganistas! -- you know who you are.

Greetings, too, to those of Uncommon Descent -- who knew there could be so many?
Almost at risk of becoming, er, common.

You've all made my Thomas Tallis post the second most visited in my entire blogging history. [Second only to my tribute to the late Lord Muggs.]

And now back to our regularly schedule planet.......


So, what are you wearing?......

FEELING STIMULATED YET?

Congress is poised to pass this massive kidney stone of a bill, to stimulate an economy that may very well be bankrupted by it.

The Democratic majority has grabbed for everything on its life-long wish-list, like those mad shoppers who trample each other to get the bargains at Wal-Mart on Black Friday, frenzied in their naked Maoist lust for control over the lives of every last miserable peasant.

Incapable of even temporary disguise, they have rocketed away on the super-sonic jet to oblivion, and recently sent onto the field of battle their former generalissimo, John Freakin' Kerry, who couldn't contain his contempt for the ordinary selfish, stupid, recalcitrant worker bee in the socialist hive. Observe.



TWO BITCH-SLAP ASSESSMENTS OF THE FIRST OBAMA FORTNIGHT:

From a predictable source, Melanie Phillips, scourge of the coming wave of Eurabia, America, What Have You Done? from the Spectator of London.

From an unexpected source, Camille Paglia, acerbic lesbo-feminist who nevertheless sports a pretty well-oiled bull-feathers meter, on money by the bucket, and threats to free speech, over at Salon.com.


You go, girls.






MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH...

That's Rancho Al Asad, Anbar Province, Iraq, as it happens. Number One Son will be heading there some time within the next few days (if I told you when, I'd have to kill you. Actually, he hasn't even told ME when). It was a generally boring time over there last time, and this chapter promises to be even worse (better) for being more boring still.

How did it get boring, you ask? Let Marine Major General John F. Kelly, 1-MEF, tell you the why and how of the whole damned thing, start to finish. LISTEN UP!!!! (Pardon the few small grammatical and punctuational errors in the transcript at Blackfive -- I'm sure it was all perfect when it came out of the General's mouth.)

TRANSFER OF AUTHORITY CEREMONY
MAJOR GENERAL JOHN F KELLY USMC
COMMANDING GENERAL
I MARINE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE (FORWARD)
MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE-WEST
AL ASAD, IRAQ
9 FEBRUARY 2009

It might surprise some here today of what a Marine is proudest of in the nearly three years he's spent on the ground in Iraq since March 2003. It is not the triumphs of the invasion and the rush to Baghdad, Tikrit and Bayji that I lived, while the rest of the world held their breath and watched as we defined military power and prowess. It isn't the fights we had over the summer of 2003 against an emerging insurgency in the Babil province, or the two battles of Fallujah in April and November of 2004. Or clearing Ramadi, or holding Karma, or cleaning out Al Qaim over the years. It's also not about the number of terrorist we've killed, and the network they served all but destroyed, today making Anbar, Iraq, the Middle East, Europe and the world a safer place protected for now at least against a sick form of extremism no decent man or woman could ever embrace. That the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that have fought here in Anbar and Western Ninawa Province, and the men and women who commanded them these last five years, are at least has good as the best in the world at this business.

What I am very proud of is the number of human beings we did not have to kill because we never stopped extending the hand of friendship even in the darkest of days gone by, and the damage we didn't do because we resorted to force last, and always restrained its use when we did go to the guns. The other things I am proud of are the cows we purchased for widows to make a living, chicken farms we established or expanded, agricultural experts we hired and brought in to help farmers save their fields and increase production, and advise the shepherds on how to cull and strengthen their flocks. Of the thousands of tons of seed and fertilizer we bought and distributed to reestablish a farm industry destroyed by over a decade of UN sanctions, and exacerbated by the current drought. Of the hundreds of miles of irrigation canals we repaired or opened up, and the schools and clinics built and stocked with supplies. The impact we had on the province's health. By fixing or building sewerage plants and systems, and water treatment facilities, we began to reduce infant mortality by reducing the unseen killers of the new born-killers that thrive in filthy water. And then there was the cholera epidemic this past summer-that didn't happen; the dreaded tuberculosis outbreak in Hadithah-that we miraculously contained and treated without the loss of a single life.

There's a whole lot more HERE, and you better read it, or else surrender your right to have an opinion about anything. Read everything else at Blackfive while you're at it. Then drop and give me 50.