STILL ALIVE,
SURROUNDED BY VISITING RELATIVES,
TAKING IN THE SIGHTS

What's the attraction in Newfoundland?

We report, you decide.

POTUS RETURNS FROM TRIUMPHANT FOREIGN TOUR

THANK GOD FOR THAT "RESET BUTTON" ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS --

THANK GOD HE HAS RESTORED TO AMERICA
THE RESPECT AND GOOD WILL OF THE WORLD

So please explain why nobody's asking him to dance....
[series of hat-tips: Gateway Pundit]







Then the Russians stuffed him into his little chair so he could rest his head on his knees...




But at least he got a warm and respectful reception from this member of the Libyan cast of La Cage aux Folles, who, I'm given to understand, sells upholstery fabrics on the side.



SPEAKING OF INTERIOR DECORATORS:

After several weeks doing battle with the crooked walls and ugly paint in our century-old retreat, I slapped on a hand-silk-screened, non-pasted, historically inspired Arts & Crafts wallpaper border purchased from Bradbury & Bradbury in California, and lovingly transported by hand on three different airplanes all the way to Newfoundland.

And let me say that, of all my various wallpapering experiences, this was by far THE BIGGEST DECOR PAIN IN THE ASS I HAVE EVER PUT MYSELF THROUGH.

That having been said, it is absolutely beautiful and worth every slobber of paste, every trip up one of three ladders, and every cuss word. I love it. Purty, eh? Pictures in situ forthcoming.

Daddy soon!

DADDY HOME!!

DADDY GETTING RE-ACQUAINTED
WITH HIS TEMPERPEDIC MATTRESS!!!!

The Eagle has landed, Cincinnatus has emptied the sand from his boots at the front door, and the little nuclear family is one again.

Hello again, America -- nice to see you intact. Can I get some sleep now?

... no longer.


OOH-RAH.

3:30 p.m. EDT, five o'clock in Newfoundland


I walk out my front door and see this:



I walk out my back door and see this:


Mm-m-m-m-m. Baking in the back porch sun, eating leftover cod au gratin, the cod bought fresh off the wharf just hours after it was caught. Mm-m-m. World? What world?

THE LAST WORD ON MICHAEL

We leave it to Representative Peter King of New York.



Yeah, what he said.

Duly noted: Texas Representative and perennial fluff-head Sheila Jackson-Lee (no relation, presumably) introduces a resolution to honour MJ, offered up in the House Foreign Affairs Committee -- is that because one of the kids whose parents sued him for intergenerational touchy-feely was from Australia? The resolution rolls out a plethora of "Whereases" describing Jackson's accomplishments and acts as a "global humanitarian" -- yeah, I always saw him as Mother Teresa in eyeliner... [double hat-tip Gateway Pundit]
Puh-leeeze.

May the poor tormented tiny dancer rest in cosmetically re-arranged pieces. I said my piece about him here (unattributed -- find me -- I'm not heavily disguised) to my friend David Warren, and I think it fits him like a glove, as 'twere.


The very empty suits of Michael Jackson, poseur and wannabe:



























Actual heroic "fruit salad", worth having:

AWARDED THE CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR:

Jason Dunham, Marine, Iraq
and Michael Thornton, Navy Seal, Vietnam















Mary Edwards Walker, Army, American Civil War
and Mitchell Red Cloud, Marine, WWII; Army, Korea















Michael Murphy, Navy Seal, Afghanistan
and Michael Monsoor, Navy Seal, Iraq















LIBERATORS OF IRAQ:

General Ray Odierno,
Commanding General Multi-National Force, Iraq
and
General David Petraeus,
Commander, U.S. Central Command

Big Ray is on Facebook, here. How cool is that.

Li'l Peaches has French & German parachutist badges. How cool is that.


And then there's Cincinnatus, transitioning from the Sandbox. Known around home for the last few weeks as "Daddy Soon!"

Yeah, what he said.

RE: SANFORD AND SON

COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF.
DIDN'T TRY.
LEFT IT TO CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD.

Back when Toronto's National Post ceased being a great paper and hemorrhaged all its best writers, including Christie Blatchford (Mark Steyn, John O'Sullivan.....), security should have paid closer attention to what was being removed in the file boxes when Christie cleaned out her desk. Predictably, she walked off with their balls.

A woman for whom the term "broad" was coined (and she'd be proud to know we think so), Blatchford has once again unleashed her acerbic wit and keen eye to deliver what should be the definitive pronouncement on the pathetic public follies of Michael Jackson and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Swoosh, whack, schwing, Christie successfully puts both in their proper place (way off centre, by any measure of sanity and human dignity).

(If you think she looks scary, check out her subjects...)

Truly, Michael Jackson defies any category of explanation -- Blatchford calls him a train wreck, and says it all. She cuts a wider swath through the notion that Jackson is being remembered in "makeshift" memorials throughout the world. Kitsch and ghastly, yes, but not since Princess Diana's demise have the teddy-bear temples been in the least bit spontaneous or makeshift. (Christie: "Makeshift, my arse.")

Sanford, unfortunately, is easily explained: have gun, will travel. Still, one may reasonably ask, "What the hell is it with these philandering political weasels, that they must come snivelling before the TV cameras to tell the world stuff that's nobody's business?"

There's at least a partial answer to the question: they do it to rationalize and excuse their transgressions, even as they pretend to ask forgiveness and call their actions "inexcusable". Sanford is one of the most transparently unrepentant ever to present himself for public atonement.

I'm not sure who is leaking all his Harlequin Romancified emails -- if he's doing it himself to paint a sympathetic picture of a man in the thrall of Great Passion, he has misfired completely and made an even more colossal ass of himself. I would never have guessed that they came from his wife, but even she is now granting interviews about the chronology of their shattered relationship, so who knows what else she might consider appropriate? What is wrong with these people? Does every soiled underthingy go right out on the line, in view of a deliberately assembled audience?

TOO-O-O
MUCH-CH-CH
INFOR-R-MA-A-A-A-A-TION-N-N-N-N.

Anyway, back to Blatchford. I defer to the honorable gentlewoman. Money quote:

...if ever a lover had looked deep into my eyes and said something like “I love you more than life itself,” or written, as Mr. Sanford did, “my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body,” I would have either vomited or kneed him sharply in the nuts... To me, it's a miracle that Mr. Sanford found two women (wife, Jenny, and lover, Maria) who think his verbal wanking sexy or endearing.

Read and enjoy.

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

John Adams, July 3, 1776

Adams was revved up by the mere public reading of the Declaration -- he couldn't wait the two days it took until the signing got underway, to kick up his heels and admit to himself that he and his compatriots had made history -- world history, even. Well, good for him. He deserved a headstart.

One of these days, when we've finished paying for remote maritime residences, weddings, and other nonsense, one of these days I'm gonna get down to the lower 48 and celebrate Independence Day in the U.S.of A. -- I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I can't remember the last time I did that.

Meanwhile, I have recently experienced Dominion Day (called, as I understand it, "Canada Day" by the Trudeapian generation -- blech) July 1st -- here's how it looks in Newfoundland:















And here's how Independence Day, July 4th, looks in Newfoundland, in my front yard:


[Is it FOGGY enough?]


SARAH BOWS OUT AS ALASKA'S CEO

I'm bummed and benumbed by the announcement that Sarah Palin is stepping aside as Alaska's governor just over halfway through her term, though I'm not entirely convinced that this turn of events is: (1) an omen of some terrible scandal she is only two steps ahead of, and/or (2) a sign that she's been pulverized by her deranged media enemies, and/or (3) a heralding of a 2012 presidential run. Just don't know at this point.

But it does bring to mind the whole baffling, repulsive tidal wave of mindless raging hate which has washed over her unceasingly for nearly a year now. Beating her politically was not enough. She must be beaten personally, socially, tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, stripped and shaven-headed, branded as a Jezebel, shunned as a leper, humiliated, degraded, and subjected to journalistic gang-rape until there's nothing left to spit on. It does give one pause.

Despite the unprecedented onslaught of crude and cruel attacks upon Palin and her family members, one can only hope that her decision to leave isn't due solely to the effect of the abuse. What that would teach the current Governing Party is that all you have to do to dispatch an annoying female opponent is call her a moron and a slut, call her children ree-tards and whores, and you can run her out of politics. Since the Governing Party has absolutely no compunction about using, or permitting its operatives and surrogates to use, precisely those terms, then such a strategy would seem to be a winner for them.

Of all the manifold public cases of Palin Derangement Syndrome, none has been more strange -- inexplicable, deviant, relentless, bizarro -- than the ongoing campaign by the formerly sane Andrew Sullivan to unmask Sarah Palin as not-mother to baby Trig. Sullivan has been convinced from the get-go that Trig is the child of Sarah's daughter Bristol, and that her claim to recent motherhood is a sham, to cover up the scandal of.......

WHAT?

Can anybody guess why she would claim her daughter's handicapped baby as her own? As the detectives and barristers are known to ask, cui bono? Who or what would benefit from such a claim? What's in it for Palin? For Bristol? For Trig?

Anything? Beuller?

Beuller???

Your guess is as good as mine. If Sullivan has proffered an answer to the cui bono question in the 533 posts about Trig on his blog, I haven't heard of it. As far as I know he just doesn't find the labor and birth circumstances plausible.

While it's been nothing if not entertaining to witness Sully laboring through the first ever spasms of interest in female reproductive functions in his long and publicly gay life, one longs for him to break down and admit that he is totally out of his element, in over his head, and several deep breaths short of a contraction. Please, Andrew, give it up before you hurt yourself.

Prof. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection analyzes PDS and concludes that it has all, always been about Trig. I'm not sure I buy that as a sweeping generalization, but I'm prepared to sweep it fairly broadly in respect of female/feminist PDS. A million babies a year are aborted. Nearly 5,000 of those have Down Syndrome (that's more than 90% of the Down's babies conceived -- all figures for U.S., updated). And who knows how many others among the million are aborted for being "imperfect" in various ways, from spina bifida to cleft palates. Each of those rejected children has a mother who knows what she did.

Sarah Palin, and any other mother who chooses to carry such a pregnancy to term, is a rebuke to the rejecting mothers, and to all those advocates of "choice" who have abstracted the unborn child into a perverse principle of autonomy. Sarah Palin doesn't need to address such women in any specific name -- all she needs to do is love and want her child, and treat him as she would treat any of her other children as she pursues her career, and she is a slap in the face of "choice". And they hate her for it. For militant advocates of "choice", it is all about Trig. They will do banshee howls to the contrary, but they lie -- it's all about Trig, and it always has been. It was deranged, and it yielded filth like this.

For the information of Andrew Sullivan and his fellow birth-truthers and Trig-obsessives, BTW, people who actually have children with Down syndrome would be the first to tell you that in the presence of large crowds and high levels of conversational din, a baby with Down's is inclined to sleep. Trig's presence in large crowds at late hours was less disturbing to him than it would be to non-Down's babies. So you can stop pretending that you care about the child's welfare and his mother doesn't. I suspect she's read the literature, and I know you haven't.

Riddle me this, leftosphere: John-John and Caroline Kennedy in Daddy's office or in their blue coats at the funeral? -- American icons.

Pelosi's grandchildren all over the Speaker's podium? -- an inspiration.

Sasha and Malia critiquing Mommy's convention speech and going off-script to Daddy on-screen from St. Louis (or was it Kansas City? he didn't know at the time)? -- cute as a button, "case closed".

But Piper and Bristol and Trig and and Willow at the convention and on the campaign trail? -- props, human shields, PR devices being pimped.

Riddle me this. I'm stumped.

How coincidental to these new developments that the oh-so-sophisticated Vanity Fair magazine is featuring a massive hatchet-job on Palin in its August iss-yew. Stenographer Todd Purdum carves her up pretty good, and finds McCain staffers to do the same.

But there's another theme running through the article... Memo to Purdum: seek medical help for an erection lasting longer than four hours.

Come to think of it, I just read Serious Historian (!?) Douglas Brinkley's breathless Vanity Fair profile of Johnny Depp. Like I said to the other guy, Dougie: seek medical help for an erection lasting longer than four hours or a week on a private yacht.