IRAQ SOVEREIGNTY DAY

UNITED STATES FORCES EXIT THE CITIES OF IRAQ
[take up defensive positions in....the suburbs?....
still armed -- still ready to kick ass]

Greyhawk says so.

A carefully chosen word, sovereignty, to distinguish between the advent of liberty (long since achieved by the coalition forces) and the commencement of the safeguarding of liberty by native Iraqi forces. I'm grateful that the Iraqi government chose this mode of expression, even if President Al Maliki was somewhat less than gracious in his public pronouncements, neglecting to give credit where credit is principally due.

Ahem.
























And ahem.























And even ahem.


Some Iraqis -- I'd even venture to guess MOST -- know how to say "thanks" to their liberators. And to them all I say, you are so very welcome.

There could be no more important assessment of the day than that provided by two of Iraq's truest-bluest patriots, who have raised their voices through the miracle of emerging cyber media, as witnesses to their country's reality, for better or for worse, since the explosive days of early 2003. I refer to Omar and Muhammad, the faithful brother scribes at Iraq The Model. Their commitment to the truth on the groud, their faith in the future and their pride in every inch of their country's slow creep forward have been an inspiration. Today it is Omar who has this to say:

For Iraq and its people however, this war was the beginning of a struggle for rebirth, a very difficult but necessary one, for sure. People of my generation who were born in democracies may take the freedom they enjoy for granted. This is certainly not the case for me or my people. I was born a decade after the murderous Ba'ath Party grabbed power in Baghdad in the sinister coup of July 1968. To us, the war brought an end to that 35-year-long nightmare and the beginning of an era of freedom, thanks to our friends in the coalition.

For me and many Iraqis, it was certainly worth it. Life is better today than it was before 2003. That is even though we were on the receiving end of this war in all its phases, from initial invasion through the bloody sectarian violence and terror that paralysed the country for years. Despite the high price in blood, today is brighter than yesterday. Above all, we have hope - something we did not have under Saddam's dictatorship - that tomorrow will be even brighter.

OOH-RAH.

Speaking of which, Cincinnatus exits the sandbox sometime in the next little sometime. That's all I can -- any more info and I'd have to kill you. Junior Buttons at home has taken to saying, "Daddy soon!"

Speaking of too much info:

Well, come to think of it, I don't want to speak of it. There's too darn much speaking going on altogether. I do NOT want to know how Whacko Jacko looked at his last rehearsal, or how the make-me-puke Governor of South Carolina found his "soul-mate" and how many times they tristed -- dude! STFU!!!!

And I sure as hell don't want to hear the Comrade-in-Chief dither on about how spending more money on health care saves money [exsqueeze me?], or blather on how we didn't let the bastards get us down in Iraq. (We didn't, of course, and there were bastards -- and he was one of them. Thought we'd forget, did you, Bambi? Fat chance.)

I'M HERE -- YOU'RE NOT

NEENER NEENER NAH NAH



Over at AMERICAN THINKER,
they're thinkin' what I'm thinkin'

James Lewis paints the portrait of The Little President Who Wasn't There.
No kidding.

For such sheer gutless flabbiness and evasion, you have to look back to the dismal Jimmy Carter years... Barack Obama loves to preen and parade his "higher" morality. But when it comes to Iranians struggling against ugly tyranny or the people of North Korean just trying to fill their bellies with food, our little president just isn't there. Nowhere to be found. Chances are that behind the scenes the mullahs are promising Obama a glorious peace agreement that will allow him to parade his gargantuan ego around the world one more time. They are Persian rug sellers over there, who know all about hard bargaining. They've got his number: He's a pushover. Obama will trade personal glory against the freedom of Iran's people any day of the week.

The amazing, shrinking president. It is easier for the First Family to pass through the eye of a needle than for a modern Democrat to stand up for American strength and political morality in the face of exotic foreigners with flowing robes and a low tolerance for Christians and Jews.



Apparently a Soldier's Life is Cheap Now

Lance Fairchok tells a tale that the regime doesn't want you to hear: President Obama has spent his negotiating capital arranging with terrorists to free the convicted murderers of American servicemen. Didja know? Thought not.

Amthinkr links to Anne Bayefsky writing in Forbes. It's a profile of the president as weenie, weasel, weaker-than-thou, or, as Julius Caesar might have put it, "Veni,Vidi, Vici" -- pronounced in the Classical mode as "Weenie, Weedy, Weaky". Ah yes, Julius Caesar -- I've thought of him so often in relation to the Obamessiah over the past six months. Let's see... According to Cassius:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.

Can we spot the parallels? YES WE CAN.

Is there anything more to be said? Nope.

Meanwhile, over at Doctor Plumbeo's Emergency Room, I weigh in on some Canadian health care tales.

WHO AM I?

Just when things have gone quiet enough that informed people may have forgotten how preternaturally stupid California Senator Barbara Boxer is, she goes out of her way to remind us, waving the neon orange flag of her clueless irrelevance for permanent memorial in the public archive. Her recent exchange with a man who has actually done something with his life:



CLUE, Senator Boxtop: For the American military man, the proper honorific towards any female to whom he feels bound to show the maximum respect accorded to ranks above his pay grade (whether they deserve it or not) is "Ma'am". He can't get any more respectful than that, just as he would be bound to say "Sir" to any higher ranking officer all the way up to the Commander-in-Chief. "Ma'am" would be his required form of address to the first female president when that shall be the case [and it won't be you, Madam Senator]. In military parlance, "Senator" is really so specific as to be a downgrade from the generic "Ma'am".

In fact, Senator Boxwood, "Ma'am" is good enough for the Queen of England. I believe the protocol is that you address her as "Your Majesty" the first time, and then "Ma'am" is proper for any subsequent exchanges. You should have been more than happy with "Ma'am", Senator Shoebox -- "Your Majesty" ain't happenin' in this lifetime. Not even for Michelle.

Madam Senator's public non-event caught the eye of Toronto's National Post journo-chatterer Marni Soupcoff, who also notes in passing the Senate resolution introduced by those two Mensa-ready doyennes of Calipornia politics, Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, congratulating the Los Angeles Lakers on taking the NBA title. Soupcoff wonders aloud what the proper mode of respectful address would be for winning coach and basketball genius Phil Jackson? She answers her own question:

Unlike Boxer, he's probably too spiritually grounded to mistake the issue for one that holds any importance whatsoever.

Yeah. what she said.

Senator Boxer gesticulates to describe the size of her IQ:


Everybody squint.

Rarely have so many risen to such heights on so little talent and merit and wreaked such havoc on the lives of more than few.

VACUUMS I HAVE KNOWN

There's been a vacuum in my blogstream for more than a week. I'm just days from lift-off to Newfoundland for more than 5 weeks, so am eyeball-high in preparations for the August wedding of #2 son, which must be completed before I leave.

And am still slogging my way through a less-than-sterling experience of trying to direct bits of Julius Caesar with 12&13-year-olds, also coming to completion, if you can call it that, this week (one week late). Never wanted to do J.C. -- will never do it again. Too late smart.

There's also been a vacuum in my upstairs toilet for several days, after my attempt to save money by replacing old parts myself. That all appeared to go well until I turned the water back on and it said, "No, I don't think I'll be filling up that tank any time soon." Plumber arrives tomorrow.

Finally, I discover there's been a vacuum in my television viewing, since I missed all of Operation Iraqi Stephen on this past week's Colbert Report -- had to catch it all online in miniature.

Memo to the world: Watch all four shows. Watch the four "B-roll" clips on YouTube. Buy the video when it comes out (as it no doubt shall). And give a hearty tip-of-the-hat and OOH-RAH to Colbert for his brilliant gift to all the deserving folks in uniform.

This bit worked well -- and showed a level of commitment rarely matched.



[Try to ignore the self-serving schlobber between Matt Lauer and some newsdoll afterward. Colbert is check/checkmate on this one.]

I enjoyed the shows so much I didn't even hurl when the Apologizer-in-Chief used the phrase "wants to play soldier" -- coming from him that was painful. We're still waiting for him to play President -- maybe by standing up for our allies in Israel, our potential allies on the streets of Iran, and our newest allies in Iraq (notice how Iraq was MIA in The One's recent pronoucements about hope for democracy in the Middle East? -- pathetic).

Instead, Obama has embarrassed himself by schlobbering on about "robust debate" leading to the Iranian election.

Here's a voter who had a robust debate with a government storm-trooper.

And here are just a few folks in Tehran who have the impression that one side of the "robust debate" went unheard. Some tea party, huh?

Of course, the MSM had little to contribute beyond strained comparisons with Bush/Gore 2000.

Oh yeah -- I remember people being shot in the streets of Florida like it was yesterday......

Welcome to my morning. It's Saturday, and I just boiled over.

I've had it with this smarmy yet ice-cold, fraudulent, loathesome political whore who is our President.

Had it. Had it.

Probably ought to bite my tongue. Sometimes other tongues do it better.

Start with the Anchoress, who calls it with her usual poignard-laced prose:

Evan Thomas, that bellweather of media obsequiousness, who once (accurately) predicted that the Democrat-loving press would give John Kerry “10 to 15% points” in his race for the White House, has declared that President Obama is “sort of god”. Chris Matthews, who would suckle Obama’s manboobs, if only Obama would lactate for him, can be heard saying “yeah,” in the background...

I don’t blame Obama for this. I blame an industry that has so insulated itself and is so lacking in diversity of thought or perspective that it has become an obscene parody of what the craft of journalism was meant to be. And I blame us, for allowing them to get away with it for so long that they could reach this point.

Bend an ear to this:



Then go here:

It's Take Your Daddy to Class Day -- whether you know it or not --
Master Sergeant Joe Myers drops in on his daughter's classroom [new link] , after a YEAR in Iraq.

THIS, Mr. Obama, is real SACRIFICE, not that bull-roar you pontificate about when you advertise your total economic incompetence as you announce more plant closings and corporate drownings. Remember?: the sacrifice nobody "chose" but were "called to." THIS, Mr. Obama, is sacrifice that people chose. And all you can do is call it getting "sidetracked" in a "war of choice" for which you have just apologized to the one of the most shallow, bloodthirsty, philosophically and morally perverted cultures ever to victimize their neighbours for more than a millennium.

And if you don't laugh, you have to cry. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gaffes it on D-Day because -- well, just because. I mean, breathes there a man with soul so dead that The One has not taken possession of his head?

Moving on to Sunday.

We must remember this:
A Fisk is just a Fisk

ROBERT "ADEODATUS" [gift from God] SPENCER
DOES A SUPERB FISKING OF THE ENTIRE
OBAMARATHON STATE-OF-THE-UTOPIA SPEECH
TO THE EAGERLY AWAITING MUSLIM WORLD

I did it -- I read the whole revolting thing, and would never have survived it without the Righteous Fisking by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch. I was especially pleased with his debunking of the conventional mythos of the cultural superiority of Al-Andalus. How sick are we of this particular piece of potted history tripe?

What Spencer missed was picked up elsewhere, with massive Fisking going on at Jihad Watch main page, and also reported by in indispensable Gateway Pundit, and the equally indispensable and always scholarly Victor Davis Hanson harnasses that vein that's been throbbing in his head in recent months to instruct our woefully undereducated President about some pivotal historical realities.

It's all there in glorious living black and white. Read it and weep -- might as well get in the habit of weeping because it's only going to get worse.

Memo to the 53% -- the trolls who voted for this creep: he is everything your right-wing enemies accused him of, EVERYTHING, and you will rue the day you closed your eyes, ripped your bodice, and gasped "take me." So will the rest of us, who are not responsible for the dismantling of two and half centuries of American progress.

I think it's a good look for him, don't you? ===>

QUESTION: WHY DID BRIAN WILLIAMS
BOW TO THE PRESIDENT?



ANSWER: BECAUSE IF HE'D BEEN ON HIS KNEES KISSING ASS, HIS HEAD WOULD HAVE BEEN OUT OF THE SHOT.

But seriously, folks, I think Williams was just trying to teach the fools of America that this is a perfectly natural custom in the United States, which is, as we recently learned, one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.

As Mort Sahl once asked, "Is anyone ill yet?"

Me, I'm pretty sick of this stuff.

TILLER THE BABY-KILLER
GUNNED DOWN IN CHURCH

Now there's a headline for the ages.

I wish Dr. George Tiller had not been gunned down, anywhere. It doesn't change the fact that he was a baby-killer, a regular practitioner of the most grisly and barbaric form of abortion on the late-term viable unborn baby (for a healthy fee of five grand). But killing him is counter-productive, to say the least.

I'm slightly at a loss for words about this, which is good because I'd probably find the wrong ones. Robert Stacy ("The Other") McCain speaks well at this difficult moment:

Sometimes, when the stubborn wickedness of a people offends God, the Almighty withholds His divine protection, permitting those sinners to have their own way, following the road to destruction so that they are subjected to evil rulers and unjust laws. Never, however, does the wise and faithful Christian resort to the kind of lawlessness practiced with such cruelty today in Kansas.

One reason I so despise such criminal idiocy is that, as a student of history, I cannot think of a single instance in which assassination has produced anything good, no matter how evil or misguided the victim, nor how well-intentioned or malevolent the assassin.

From Brutus and the other republican Senators who slew Julius Caesar to Charlotte Corday, from John Wilkes Booth to Gavrilo Princip, and so onto Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray, assassination seems inevitably to work against the purposes of its practitioners.

Those who slew Caesar did not save the Roman republic. Marat's death only incited the Jacobins to greater terror. Booth's pistol conjured up a spirit of vengeance against the South more terrible than war itself. Assassination is an act of nihilism. Whatever the motive of the crime, the horror it evokes always inspires a draconian response, and involves other consequences never intended by the criminal.

The alleged assailant, Scott Roeder, is about as "typical" a pro-life advocate as the the Reverend Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church brood are typical Christian believers. I guess it's fitting that the Phelps clan wasted no time in showing up to support the murderer. They deserve each other.

Roeder began his career as a nutjob by joining up with the "Freemen" movement, an anti-government anti-tax cult that instructs poor dupes how to declare themselves "sovereign men" so they can dodge their taxes and legitimate creditors. (Hard to find a link to this bunch that isn't completely suspect.) He was also charged with possession of bomb-making materials, but acquitted due to procedural irregularities on the search -- according to his ex-wife this just made him more self-righteous.

So in other words, whatever flirtation he may have had with mainstream pro-life groups, he is one of those people who has always been of no use whatsoever, unwilling to do the kind of hard-slagging shoe-leather work that stays within the law and tries to change minds. It appears that stewing away in his little rage-bubble in the end proved unsatisfactory, and it appears that when he finally lifted a finger it was wrapped around a fire-arm. Lazy sod.

So in one blast of a gun, a murderer has shot the legs out from under every reasoned argument and every reasonable person who deplores abortion and works for the day that every child will be welcomed in life and protected by law.

Thank you so much, idiot.

Dr. Tiller joins the very short list of abortionists who have been killed for their profession. This list remains an infinitessimal fraction of the number of abortionists killed on episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent and in other television and film fantasies regularly conjured up by the artistic supporters of "a woman's right to choose."

And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that.


FLOTUS: NO CHEAP DATE

President Obama and wife Michelle did a quick hop down to The Big Apple to catch a Broadway show, then back home again the same night. Needless to say, it cost more than that similar jaunt taken by Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown to Havana, in Broadway's timeless "Guys and Dolls". Cost estimates have run anywhere from $24,000 (Ha! are you kidding me?) to 75,000 pounds to $250,000 (at least, I'm bettin').

Now, as the mother of a certain Marine who flew a 100-foot helicopter from California to Wyoming, as part of a Normandy-style landing operation to facilitate Dick Cheney playing a round of golf during the last administration, I have no illusions about what it costs for the President to go anywhere safely for any purpose, and Lord knows we don't expect him to live like a monk while he's in office.

Or do we? At least we can say for sure that Cheney did not follow any of his well-escorted vacations with a speech scolding the American public into regarding the prospect of their personal economic train-wreck as a "sacrifice" they are "called to make." (Very Biblical language for describing the Obamandated downhill slide on the poverty wagon -- appropriate enough, I guess, considering the Divine Source.)

So normally I wouldn't give the cost of a Presidential date-night a second thought. But I'd be pretty surprised if any president in my memory ever did something similar -- that is, the drive-by drop-in for totally private entertainment purposes, to another city in another state, and home again that night -- on the public buck. We've had some jet-set presidents who would be quite comfortable doing such things, but usually for fund-raisers or some public event, and likely coupled with some sort of official business. Other presidents (the Bushes come to mind) would not have been temperamentally inclined to this brand of rather decadent jetting about for private fun. If that's another way of saying they were dull homebodies, I won't argue.

But whatever their personal habits, most of them lacked the rare kind of gall it takes to run for president on promises of exceptional purity, preach sacrifice, enforce hardship, and live like a frickin' sultan.

All that without bothering to put on a tie.

I don't know about Michelle, but when I get all duded up I do NOT want to be escorted by a guy in an unbuttoned shirt. As usual, Michelle managed to screw up an otherwise good-looking ensemble with something inexplicable, in this case an electric blue clutch purse. But at least she had a "finished" look, complete with sparkly jewels. So POTUS, put on a damn tie. FLOTUS should have kicked your butt.

This is the first time I've ever heard the First Lady referred to as "FLOTUS", which is only logical but somehow still funny. It's probably just me -- the word is too reminiscent of my first childbirth confinement, when the Last Nurse in the Nation to bother with wearing a little white cap and using proper technical terms kept asking me if I had passed any "flatus." She was actually a nice break from the presumptuous informality of her [our] generation, and I should never have referred to her as "Nurse Snippet."


A LITTLE CONFECTION FOR CATHOLICS
SUFFERING FROM BAD MUSIC:

A recent extended (as they always are) conversation with my niece and namesake yielded some fun concepts for those of us who subscribe to the credo of those folks over at the now defunct Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas. Here's my contribution:


GUARANTEED TO SOUR YOUR SUNDAE!!

IT'S BLAND!

IT'S FRUITY!

IT'S OOZING WITH SACCHARINE!!!



It's shot through and through
with gobs of heretical goo,
and topped with candy-coated NUTS --

THE ULTIMATE INDULGENCE!

Discover why Moses wandered for 40 years lost in the DESSERT!!

Haugen-Haas -- More dangerous than Ben and Jerry's.
Gum up your vocal chords, and go for it.