Winefred's Well

2012-01-24T12:49:00.004-05:00

THE EISENHOWER MEMORIAL PROPOSAL:

IT'S SO CRAPPY ITS CRAPPINESS HAS ITS OWN WEBS ITE

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?

2012-01-20T13:46:00.003-05:00

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.

2012-01-18T13:01:00.004-05:00

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:

2012-01-17T13:26:00.005-05:00

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.

2012-01-14T10:33:00.006-05:00

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?

2012-01-10T21:06:00.002-05:00

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?

2012-01-09T10:47:00.012-05:00

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 Gh ez zi, 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.

2012-01-04T00:43:00.005-05:00

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.

2012-01-01T13:45:00.017-05:00

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.

2011-12-18T22:40:00.007-05:00

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?

2011-12-16T10:40:00.004-05:00

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...)

2011-11-28T23:12:00.009-05:00

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.

2011-11-25T00:34:00.001-05:00

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

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

2011-11-18T11:22:00.008-05:00

[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

2011-11-10T10:23:00.004-05:00

ALL PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS DREAM OF WRITING SOMETHING OF
LASTING SIGNIFICANCE

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

2011-11-08T22:35:00.005-05:00

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?

2011-10-25T23:24:00.008-04:00

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.

2011-10-18T11:05:00.003-04:00

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 Pa lazzo Davanzati, which is AWESOME. A medieval must-see.

2011-10-17T17:30:00.004-04:00

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.

2011-09-30T12:16:00.003-04:00

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.

2011-09-20T10:08:00.005-04:00

NOTHING SAYS HISTORY LIKE ACTUAL HISTORY

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

2011-09-18T23:02:00.002-04:00

KNIVES, OUT

JOURNALISTS FIND THEMSELVES DOING THEIR
2008 CANDIDATE RESEARCH

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

video platform video management video solutions video player

2011-09-12T10:00:00.003-04:00

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

2011-09-11T00:40:00.004-04:00

We salute World Trade Center Memorial architect Michael Arad.

A personal visit will be required to know for certain, but at first impression, it seems he has done well.

2011-09-08T23:37:00.005-04:00

ALIVE DAY

This Sunday is America's "Alive Day". That's a term that, as far as I know, is a coinage of the Iraq war -- it's a function of the fact that medical advances have brought more people home, alive and damaged, than ever before in the history of warfare. This war has produced more amputees than any conflict since the Civil War. Back then amputations resulted from simple gunshot wounds -- more grievous injuries, from artillery and such, killed instantly. Today, with vastly greater firepower in countless types of weapons, if the injured are evacuated in short order, their survival rate is over 90%. The day these warriors were hit, and didn't die, is their Alive Day.

In the ten years since September 11 and the start of the wars against terrorism, I have accumulated a small collection of videos that deserved to be bought and paid attention to. So I bought them to show my support, especially of people like J.D. Johannes, one of the self-embedded reporters who raised their own money and put themsleves in harm's way to get the true story out. I sent "walkin' around money" to Johannes and Bill Roggio, and more serious money to Michael Yon; and I bought two editions of Johannes' combat video documentary Outside the Wire.

And there they sat, gathering dust on my bookshelf. I could never make myself watch them. Sitting alongside was Alive Day Memories, actor James Gandolfini's interviews with severely wounded Iraq veterans, supplemented by video of the warriors before their injuries, during and after their hospitalizations, sometimes even the scene of the attack on their Alive Days through footage later released by "insurgents" showing massive IED explosions, complete with soundtrack of the sickeningly triumphant mantra "Allahu Akbar", as men like Army Sgt. Bryan Anderson, somewhere within the fireball, are being relieved of 3 out of 4 limbs.

Also in the mix are French brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet's documentary 9/11, being their accidental history of September 11 in Manhattan, which started its life as a human interest documentary about rookie firemen; The Third Jihad, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser's 2008 close look at the true nature of the enemy; and my most recent addition, the commercial film/docudrama United 93.

This is my week for watching them all, ticked off one by one, sandwiched between various TV specials. Call it wallowing -- I do. It's time.

LEST WE FORGET, OKAY?

I learned today, to my great disappointment, that the majority of the tributes which once collectively formed the 2996 Project -- a website linking up personal tributes to every person killed on September 11 -- have gone offline into non-functional links. How very sad. As this anniversary day approached, I've been thinking about how I would re-post my tributes, and how important it would be to do so at this ten-year mark, and I find it hard to understand how more than 2000 of the one-time contributors to this project would not feel compelled to refresh their works for this anniversary year. However, that's how it is. We soldier on.

Once again, we remember:

Jack Charles Aaron
John Thomas McErlean
Rick Rescorla
Ken Basnicki
David Barkway
HERE
HERE
HERE

Never forget the sacrifice of:

Capt. Kyle Van de Giesen, USMC
1st Lt. Jared Landaker USMC
1st Lt. Travis Manion USMC
and
Lt. Brendan Looney USN

Never forget the suffering of:

PRIVATE KRISTIAN MENCHACA
AND
PRIVATE THOMAS TUCKER

Never forget the heroism of:

Tom Burnett
Jeremy Glick
Todd Beamer
Mark Bingham
and all the passengers and crew of United 93
Terrorism ruled in the United States for approximately one hour and twenty minutes. Then these ordinary Americans punched back.
They were the Minutemen of our age.

2011-09-07T22:10:00.009-04:00

DRAW?

Republican debate tonight, the first I've seen all the way through so far. This was the big showcase for new candidate Rick Perry of Texas, the "idea" of whom caught fire (not a pleasant image for a Texan these days) very quickly after his announcement, failed to catch fire this evening. If it were a tennis match between Mitt Romney and Perry, it would have to be "advantage Romney".

It was, however, a team sport -- but one would be hard-pressed to say that the Repubs have a "deep bench". They (we?) could have a deep bench if it included a few others like Ryan, Cantor, West, or Rubio, but each of those guys is young enough to wait his turn and ripen for another election cycle or two. (Apparently the Rushmeister predicted that Rubio would be president one day -- I concur, all things begin equal regarding hotel rooms with live boys, dead girls, or kodiak bears...)

NOT A DRAW

President Zero (as more and more people across the political spectrum have taken to calling the current occupant of the Oval Office) has decided to decrease the military presence in Iraq to a KAMIKAZE level, to pander to his farthest left constituency, who are increasingly pissed off at him for adherence to various Bush doctrines.

People who know more about foreign policy and military matters than Obama (that would include most of the kids in charter and voucher schools) are absolutely beside themselves. Greta Von Susteren wonders why he would come up with this bonehead plan in defiance of the advice of all his generals -- maybe because he's an ARROGANT MARXIST IDIOT?

I can't really think of anything more to say about this plan, except to solicit prayers from all quarters that common sense and decency will prevail, and the Benighted One will pull a U-turn on this one.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle;

be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.

And do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God,
cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who wander throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

What was this all for, anyway?

2011-09-06T12:25:00.005-04:00

TEN YEARS ON

Poignant Tweets from Erica Basnicki, daughter of Canadian WTC victim Ken Basnicki, as she returns home from her new life in London, to be with her family this weekend.

August 11: Been quiet because I've been bracing for this, my last month as "Terror Orphan" (crappy columnists can be cruel). Freedom in T-minus 30 days

August 12: Surrounded by 10 years of 9/11 at home. No wonder I've moved so much; otherwise how to escape it? Maybe I should've tried coping. But how?

August 16:

Thought I was coming back to Canada to be 9/11 Girl again. I now realize, that's just not me anymore. Back to nerding out over audio...

August 17: Just posted: 9/11 Girl is Retiring [http://ericabasnicki.com/]

August 18: Loving this. Canada, what will we do? RT @911day "I will" billboard spotted in Miami! yfrog.com/h84j0ymwj

Thinking of you, Erica, and Maureen and Brennan (go Del! 2002 champs!)

2011-09-06T02:42:00.002-04:00

WE COMMENCE A WEEK FOR REFLECTION

Here's a nice video piece on the World Trade Center memorial. It's been too long in arriving and still isn't finished (and those resposible should be ashamed) but it looks like the park itself will be a peaceful and yet haunting place, which is at it ought to be. Can't say I care for the "Freedom Tower" design at all, but I suspect in the end that few people on the site will look at it much.

2011-08-31T12:11:00.007-04:00

JACK LAYTON ~~LAID~~ SPRAYED TO REST

For those not hanging on every ripple in Canadian parliamentary politics, the official Leader of the Opposition, having dragged his party across the finish line in a second place showing, from a few dozen seats to over 100 -- an unprecedented surge, so stunning that people far and wide have mistaken it for some kind of sea change in Canadian loyalties -- died before he had a chance to savour his victory.

In reality, the 2011 election was, in fact, a very deliberate demonstration on the part of Quebeckers that they were fed to the teeth with all the other parties and were engaging in a province-wide snit. In addition, the Liberals had elected as head of their party a man as warm and engaging as the haughty, French-looking presidential candidate who-by-the-way-served-in-Vietnam John Forbes Kerry -- I speak of former Hahrvard intellectool, Michael Ignatieff, who parlayed a long and successful career as a perfessor and talking head into a short and clumsy political career back in Canada. He pushed the government into an election which all thinking persons knew he would lose. He did. His once-ruling party has nearly disappeared.

All this put the official leftist fringe into the Official Opposition chair, making lifelong political hack Jack Layton (Head of the New Democratic Party, Canada's official socialists) the Leader of the Opposition.

Quite apart from his lifelong dedication to every idiot cause on the planet, one had to hand it to Layton that he had taken his merry band of wingnuts to a startling new height in a very short time. And no one would wish on Mr. Layton what happened next: he was found to be in the grip of terminal cancer, and died within months of his political zenith.

It was not hard to muster sympathy even for such a leftist wingnut in this unhappy situation -- but sympathy was taxed when it was clear that, even in death, he was still pandering to the constituencies. There was a smarmy, cliche-ridden farewell Letter to the Nation, straight from the heart -- the heart of Jack, his equally political hack wife, and a sub-committee of advisers; there was the flooding bathos tub of teddy-bear grief and shrines; there was the Prime Minister's absurd (yet politically astute) granting of a State Funeral which morphed (unsurprisingly) into a near Wellstone Memorial.

The final act of this folk opera was the disposal of the remains. Not Gaul, but Jack, was divided into three parts, to be distributed in three meaningful, uh, ridings, as it were, strewn like rose petals at an Augustan triumph.

And of course, all was complete with the rite of Deification: the outpourings of praise so over-the-top that even some reporters (themselves the swooners-in-chief) eventually had to cry "Hold! Enough!"

But if one were to survey the Canadian major media as a visitor from the far side of Mars -- or, alternatively, from the online magazine Daily Caller in Washington, D.C. -- one could not be blamed for mistaking Jack Layton for the reincarnation of Ghandi and Marcus Aurelius. Hence the KoolAid-sodden outpourings of an innocent young Sarah Palin fan named Adam Brickley. He produced a glowing paean to a politician he'd never really seen in action, entitled Jack Layton: A socialist who earned the admiration of conservatives.

Really? Who knew?

He goes on:

...frankly I found his political ideas to be both appalling and dangerous, but he was arguably the single greatest politician of his generation — anywhere in the world... People will be studying Layton’s achievements and strategies for decades to come.

Then he addresses Jack:

I have a sneaking suspicion that your story is going to be made into a major Hollywood blockbuster someday.

Puh-leeeeze! Chill out, kid!

I couldn't help myself: I had to set him straight. Find me in the comments, and I have some knowledgeable support.

Jack Layton, Superhero. 1950-2011.

Resting in pieces.

Layton looks warmly at notorious Canadian abortionist Henry "Dr. Death" Morgentaler, whose Order of Canada honours Layton heartily endorsed. Morgentaler, appropriately enough, showed up for the funeral.

2011-08-26T12:03:00.003-04:00

SOME YELL "FIRE!"

SOME YELL "FORE!"

Betsy M. Galliher at American Thinker juxtaposes the burial of the best and bravest, with the sinking of the little round white ball into the cup for umpty-thousandth time as the Commander-in-Chief of United States military forces shoots up with his nine-iron and feeds his golf habit yet again.

Some Gave All , Obama Shot Par

Meanwhile, back at the Big White Ranch on Pennsylvania Avenue, there's leakage in them there castle walls. The whole dirt dished on Michelle O's "vacation junkie" habits -- and, as usual, it takes the foreign press to do the dishing.

2011-08-18T23:39:00.004-04:00

BARACK OBAMA,
THIRD BLUES BROTHER

Hat-tip, Swindle Vision, via GatewayPundit. You gotta love it.

2011-08-17T11:51:00.009-04:00

ODDS AND SODS (Just to prove I'm here)
UPDATED

Me and the spousal unit recently sat down for a re-view of The Last Waltz, cinematic chronicle of the final concert by The Band. [OMG what a sycophantic little schmuck Scorsese is!] As often happens, I sit with the lap-top on my lap (so conformist of me) and do some background and fact-checking while watching a "period piece".

One slice of info unearthed that evening brought a smile to my face: for her pop-crap version of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Joan Baez admits being content to get the lyrics wrong because she just pulled what she thought she heard from The Band's recording without checking them for accuracy -- but, even better, the Baez version spent awhile among the top ten on the charts: the EASY LISTENING charts. BWA-HA-HA!!!!!!

There's also the sad element of doing this sort of thing: checking up on which members of The Band are dead and how it happened. Sigh. On the up side, drummer Levon Helm had throat cancer, lost his voice, recovered it, and is still singing. Though he has a positively alarming set of dentures.

CANADA PUTS A DENT IN THE LEGACY OF
LES SOIXANTE-HUITARDS --
LET THE UNRAVELLING PROCEED!!!

On the 100th anniversary of the founding of the designated "Royal Canadian Navy" and nearly a hundred years since the inception of the famous RCAF, these two branches of the military are finally regaining their original honours, once again to be called "Royal" instead of being a pocket of the unspeakably banal "Canadian Forces" in their generic green security guard uniforms, an entity created in 1968 under the foam rubber aegis of the insufferable Franco-hippie Pierre Trudeau.

The story is that veterans have been agitating for this change for a chunk of the last decade. But I bet the whole thing got a big boost from the visiting Heir to the Throne, who showed up looking like a plausible monarch, and put on his flight suit to do helicopter search and rescue exercises with the lads. Good show.

Huzzah and Ooh-Rah!!!! Let the Red Ensigns fly again!!!!
That is all.

MINOR AMERICAN NAVAL NOTE

Remember this post on the kick downstairs of a certain aircraft carrier CO? Well, I hope those who made it happen are proud. Turns out that when it came to morale, the #2 man for the job was pretty much, well, "Number Two", if ya get my drift. [I STAND CORRECTED: change of command on the Big E was not related to any leadership shortcomings.]

Just sayin', if you're listenin' , Corinne Reilly.

Some Grundy/Reilly approved video entertainment for today's USN:

2011-08-13T21:55:00.002-04:00

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Will I ever tire of using that phrase to announce my continued existence and return to blogging? Short answer: no.

I'm working on a Big Post, which will have to wait until my head clears (nauseating details of the state of my health we shall forego, but I have suffered an invasion which may or may not have some relation to my having ordered the E-Coli special at a St. John's McDonald's).

In the meantime, I will bring closure to my previous musings on the Great Canadian/Newfoundlandian mini-series, Random Passage.

By the time I had finished tape 3 out of 4, I had begun to get impatient with the characters and their endless personal drammers, so I looked on the internet to see if it was going to unfold as I was privately predicting. It turned out that I was not quite correct on all the details, but I had the gist of it down. Still I persevered with watching all of it, and reached two somewhat related conclusions:

(1) One could be justified in nick-naming this work "Random Sausage" -- I think that's self-explanatory;

(2) If there was anything you could call a "surprise ending" it was the late chapters set in St. John's, in which the EEEEEVIL Catholic Church was portrayed like some collection of cartoon villains, injuring, enslaving, and cheating the poor workmen of the town in order to build a huge cathedral* to the glory of the local Bishop* (called, inexplicably, "your Lordship").

In other words, it's just the typical sort of artistic venture which government grant pimps of Canada cheerfully fund and support with regularity.

*Never mind that the actual cathedral in question was not begun until 1841, several years after the Random Passage story ends (1837), and that Newfoundland did not get its first Catholic bishop until 1847. But, ya know, whatever.

Stay tuned for more important news and views.

2011-07-20T00:02:00.026-04:00

RANDOM MUSINGS FROM THE LAND OF
RANDOM PASSAGE

That's Random Passage, Canadian/Irish miniseries about tough life on the Newfoundland rock in 1805. The production dates to 2000, but I finally got around to watching it, but not without perils. Had to crank up the VHS machine -- that was a comedy.

Not a bad series so far, but not exactly a page-turner yet either. And turning the page on this one means that I have to jam in cassette #2 and then rewind it for an eternity because in my early attempts to get the machine to work I thought maybe the cassettes were faulty and put in two different ones, then pushed all the buttons to see if it would do ANYTHING. I finally figured out that my machine was so cheap, its counter function only counted minutes and not seconds, which is why it was moving so slowly. So glad I have this ancient artifact to show my grandchildren one day, and they can see how, in order to watch videos, we had to walk barefoot five miles in the snow, etc.

Back to Totally Random mode.

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP
FOR THE BRITISH MONARCHY

The Prince and Princess, the Duke and Duchess, Wills and Kate made a grand splash in their Canadian touchdown, and then went on to charm selected U.S. cities. A very impressive couple -- and if they keep doing this, they will make it impossible for Charles and his Duchess to mount the thrones. This young man appears to be the real thing, and has chosen a woman of modesty and grace to be at his side. (She has no hips, sporting the alarming tubular figure of the modern girl, but one hopes that the heir and the spare will fix that. Give the girl sandwich, please!)

Nice first outing, kids. The family business may well survive another generation.

WHO THE HELL CAST PAUL GIAMATTI AS JOHN ADAMS?

Just finished another mini-series, John Adams -- not as good as touted, but entertaining with satisfying historically authentic trappings (right down to the bad teeth -- could have done without that). Laura Linney (political ninny) is quite fine as Abigail, as are many others in the cast, but Giamatti is largely ridiculous as John, only occasionally rising above his actorly instinct for caricature, and generally failing to grasp the persona of a colonial gentleman. Listening to him talk about the role in the documentary section is simply cringeworthy, but explains why he falls short in his attempt to draw this rich and complex personality on film.

As for accuracy on the events of history (what should have been the real TEETH of the show), I defer to those more knowledgeable than myself, and I am not surprised to find a reliable voice courting apoplexy as he tries to give the briefest of catalogues of the sort of pointless innaccuracies permitted in the TV telling of this tale. [Jeremy Stern, doctoral candidate at Princeton, blows off steam over at the History News Network.]

It is a sad thing when the half-educated of Hollywood apply their first-rate artistic and technological skill sets while lacking the ability to discern the most common lesson of all historical film-making: that truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is usually much more interesting, moving, and dramatic. Will they never learn?

Historian David McCullough, on whose well-respected work this series was ostensibly based, reported himself to be thrilled with its authenticity. What was he smoking?

More likely, he was just inhaling the rarified vapors given off by Hollywood glamor in action, while being guru-gushed by Tom Hanks, who flattered his eminent grey head off. I fully agree with Stern that there is not only mindless disinformation in this film, but flagrant injustice to any number of characters, most especially its putative heroine, Abigail Adams, who is snuffed out with no reference made to her instrumental role in re-establishing ties with their estranged friend Thomas Jefferson; injury is likewise done to Adams' cousin Samuel, whose violent revolutionary impulses and opposition to John early in the film are sheer fantasy.

And poor John Dickinson, delegate from Pennsylvania (and life-long public servant in one capacity or another) fares only slightly better in 8 television hours than he did in a couple of hours of the lightweight musical 1776. In the latter he is a cardboard villain representing the extremely wealthy, and suffers the indignity of having one of his particular contributions to the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms of 1775 [that Americans were "resolved to die free men rather than live slaves"] called "magnificent" by Adams but attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Dickinson's co-writer (a fact never acknowledged in the musical since that would mess up his role as primo villain). He is more sympathetically portrayed in the miniseries, though, again, chronology is distorted to make him look bad, when he was actually a much-loved and admired man.

As for Giamatti, he uses the word "weird" a lot to describe both his character and the times, which shows at just what level he is operating. He brings to the role a lot of tension and a symphony of facial ticks, but it is difficult to take him seriously at the best of times. He also has one problematic feature, not his fault, but which renders him unsuitable to carry off the personage of John Adams: he has the puffy features and burly figure of a peasant. When he gets incensed or passionate, his bulging eyes get rhumy but never piercing, and he tries to make up for it by giving us major lip tremor, which does double duty when he's grieving. Doesn't cut it.

Adams may not have been an early American "aristocrat" in his family lineage, but all his many portraits show him to have been a man of "fine" facial features, those of a gentleman of good British "stock" -- a difference which would not have escaped his confreres in Congress, nor did it escape me. Presumably, farmer though he was, I suspect he had the gentlemanly carriage to go with the face. Giamatti has neither, and physically, I didn't buy him as Adams for one minute.

The series also had the problem of casting people who were too old for their characters at the beginning -- my sense was they were trying to find faces that resembled the real dudes, but they should have counted on the wonders of aging make-up to make younger actors older, rather than the usually unsuccessful reverse. David Morse looked fabulously George Washington, but he was 60 when he should have been 45.

[left: young Washington, 1772, in the uniform of pre-revolutionary Colonel Washington, not that of the Continental Army as seen mistakenly in the series, in the mid-1770's]

[left: 1795 portrait that was model for series image all the way through]

Then there's Benjamin Franklin. The tall, wiry, and craggy-faced Tom Wilkinson was another downright odd casting choice. Paul Giamatti, in fact, bears a very credible resemblance to Franklin, who prided himself on his peasant roots, had a puffy face, good-sized nose, and hooded eyes. Sigh. This is what happens when people fail to consult me on such important matters.

Hey! This is such bullsh&t!

I am a SO serious actor, babe!

[postscript: By way of explanation, Laura Linney is a political ninny because, when accepting an Emmy for some aspect of this production, she paid tribute to the Founding Fathers as "community organizers." It was 2008, and the Annointed Community Organizer from Chicago was poised to become President. To call it the "Silly Season" is to trivialize the monumental foolishness of 51% of the voters.]

A beautiful day in Newfoundland is passing, so I must close here. More interesting "separated at birth" photo pairs to come.

2011-06-27T00:08:00.006-04:00

ROAD TRIP!

Finished packing much later than expected. Stopped at Tim Horton's for coffee, iced cappocino, and two days' worth of Tim-bits. Stopped at Mickey D's for bacon cheeseburger and fries. With a car running on vapors, stopped at the gas station to fill up -- not a personal best -- only $90.

Then -- pedal to the metal!!!

For the first time in nearly six years, I head for beautiful New Hampshire to learn how to do this.

After 45 minutes, hot and yawning, at the very crowded border crossing, feared that I might have to stop and take a nap ten minutes out of Ontario. However, caffeine kicked in, with a massive dose of Atlantic Canadian fiddle music, and the hours sped by, alert, relaxed, breathin' in the scenery.

Beautiful day for a drive across New York State. Following (in reverse) the path described in the folk song about the Erie Canal: "From Albany to Buffalo... we'll make Rome 'fore six o'clock..."

Rome -- we're planning to go there in the fall! -- yet here I am, driving through New York, and there it is: Rome! And then -- wait for it -- Verona! Well, I gotta check this out. Besides, I haven't looked at a map yet and am not too sure where I am. So I head off the highway, and off to Rome/Verona.

Oops. Forgot about the part where a departure from the Thruway on a "whim" means paying a big old toll to get off. Okay. All roads lead to Rome.

Or not. Rome is 8 miles off the highway. So I'll settle for Verona. Not much to Verona, as it happens (not that I really got into the town, just a highway junction). But it did offer one outstanding attraction.

God bless America.

Now I reside in a hotel in East Greenbush. Just past Albany, home of the profoundly dysfunctional state government, which spends its time seeking ever more ways to squeeze the life out of the whole state with some of the most outrageous taxes in the country. But as of yesterday, they've apparently found a perq they can afford: now I can marry my girlfriend.

Dude at the Daily Caller sums up the paradoxes of New York life purty good.

You can marry a person of the same gender in New York City, but you can't eat your own wedding cake without Bloomberg slapping it out of your hands.

Transgender = no problem. Transfat = illegal.

Heh.

Getting late.

2011-06-23T23:48:00.005-04:00

THE DAILY CALLER REPORTS:

OBAMA FLUBS ON MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT

Dead? I didn't even know he was sick!

Yes, the Commander-in-Chief was so pleased and impressed to be handing out a Medal of Honor last November to Staff Sgt.Salvatore Giunta (2nd Battallion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade -- still serving), he got him confused with a dead man -- the late Sgt.1st Class Jared Monti, 71st Cavalry, 10th Mountain Division, killed in Afghanistan June 2006, MOH presented September 2009.

An easy mistake -- anybody could make it. After all, there have been two Medals of Honor awarded by the current President, in 2.5 years -- that can get confusing, man. I mean, it's only a Medal of Honor, for cripes' sake -- it's not as if it's the Nobel Peace Prize or something.

It's one of those days, folks, when I think the only thing about this President that isn't fake is the fact that he's an effing JACKASS -- a man who put the froid in sang-froid. He's like a droid with an electoral reflex and little else zipping through his wires. C-Creepy-O. Who knew that Michelle's White House garden could grow such a 24-carrot phony?

We salute our Medal of Honor recipients, living and dead, and we hope their Commander-in-Chief will make a concerted effort in the future to tell one from the other. Or at least a convincing effort, for the sake of their families, to pretend that it matters -- that brand of fakery would at least be a sort of compliment.

2011-06-23T10:21:00.003-04:00

"I don't profess to know the right thing to do, but whatever it is, that ain't it."

I yield the floor to the smart guys, as Powerline weighs in on the White Flag of Obama. Money quotes:

That's some centered course you've got there, pal. In your brilliant efforts abroad, you have managed to produce a months-long stalemate with a fourth-rate Third World dictator. If you haven't yet become a laughingstock, you are nevertheless doing a fine job helping the United States to become one.

As for our union: let us seek union in the understanding that cliches are the enemy of clear thought.

Obama's cheap echo of Lincolnian rhetoric at the end of the speech sounded to me like fingernails screeching across the blackboard. I've read Lincoln's speeches. I can't say I knew Lincoln, but I know the history of his presidency and of the Civil War. And Mr. President, you're no Abraham Lincoln.

Indeed.
P.S.: With the recent disclosure that Sarah's Palin's 24,000 emails revealed a "clear and concise" writing style at an 8th grade level (8.5, on a scale where King's "I have a dream" scored an 8.8 and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address scored 9.1), one wonders where Obama's customary pile of incoherent cliches would come in. One may speculate that Palin has him shellacked. One is just sayin'.

2011-06-22T23:22:00.007-04:00

OBAMA ANNOUNCES AFGHANISTAN SURRENDER
AND OFFICIAL POLICY OF ISOLATIONISM

...except for that Libya thing.... and maybe that Yemen deal.

(More on that when my LTJG Navigating F-18 WIZO gets back from Arabian Sea deployment. Steaming home even as we speak.)

Steven Green customarily drunkblogs the Afghan speech. Money quotes (from Green, not from the Speecher):

5:07PM “Peace needs… a political settlement.” If I were Karzai, I’d start sleeping in a bunker. In Pakistan.
5:08PM Wow. Kabul is going to start functioning like a real national government, because Obama said it “must.” And it will do so with less support from us.

Come again?

5:09PM “This has been a difficult decade.”

Well — yeah. Duh. But, please, Mr. President, say it like you mean it. It’s like he’s announcing a “worthwhile Canadian initiative.”

5:10PM “The tide of war is receding.”

Churchill, he ain’t.
5:12PM “We will support those Arab revolutions by setting a nice example and saying nice things.”
5:12PM Oh good lord. It’s turned into a Model UN speech. High school Model UN, not college.

5:13PM “Nation-building here at home.”

Seriously, at my model UN, he’d have been laughed off the stage, and we were stupid earnest back then.
5:16PM Wolf Blitzer called it “short but upbeat.”

If that’s upbeat, MacBeth is a light comedy.

SuperSchmuck Wesley Clark goes on the O'Reilly Factor and rationalizes the Libya gum-up, plus the ignoring of General Petraeus, with the excuse that "the President has to look at the broader picture -- as if this monumentally ignorant golfer-in-chief has ANY idea what a broader picture of ANY aspect of American life and policy looks like.

Dennis Miller on O'Reilly continues with his mantra: "Who cares what the guy says -- it's what he does that counts -- and so far Obama is a KILLING MACHINE." Just keep saying it, Miller -- because it's so true, and it gets the whole left phalanx so pissed.

So -- he ignores his lawyers about the War Powers Act, he ignores his generals about how to win a war, he ignores his wife about a healthy diet of figs'n'twigs. OMG, before we know it he'll be ignoring his pack of Chicago thugs, his pastor-of-choice, and his magic mirror.

Local News:

BEYOND HILARIOUS

STRIKING CANADA POST WORKERS seen today, on the picket line at Dufferin and Lawrence, in 75 degree heat with 80+% humidity, standing around the ritual fire in an oil drum.

Because, hey -- it's what we do, in the name of the oppressed worker, facing down THE MAN. "Save our Sick Days!"

What can Brown do for you?

2011-06-16T14:28:00.017-04:00

DA-NILE AIN'T JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT
[UPDATED]

MOUTHY CONGRESSMAN WEINER DEPARTS,
WITH THE PUBLIC MOUTHING OFF AT HIM

With barely a soupçon of humility, Rep. Anthony Weiner announced his resignation from Congress, to which his "neighbors" (as he referred to his constituents) hollered out "Bye-bye, pervert!"

Cruel, but accurate. Anthony Weiner is a habitual, long-term practitioner of the cyber version of standing in the shadows and opening your raincoat to reveal your erection to unsuspecting and unwilling passing ladies or children. He's an exhibitionist. Had he done it the old-fashioned way, he'd be headed for a stretch in County Jail and a permanent record as a sex offender.

As someone who was a victim of one of these old-fashioned pervs when I was a very young girl (Lloyd Center parking lot, Portland, Oregon, early 1960's), I wouldn't claim that I've been done any permanent damage, but let's say it's a lasting photo on my mental wall.

Despite his physical proximity and direct in-the-flesh exposure to the victim, I think the guy in the parking lot was actually engaging in the more anonymous and less risky pattern of behavior. Weiner, as a public figure, operating through a medium which (any half-wit knows) leaves a traceable signature with every act, was doing something infinitely more dangerous than standing around in a parking lot -- and therefore more stupid.

[UPDATE: Apparently I have violated the Prime Directive by using a copyrighted image which the owner wishes to protect. I'm guessing it's not the photo above, since that is still all over the 'net in use by amateur commentators like me. So my other choices were (a) a picture of hot-dogs; (b) a picture of the Vienna skyline; or (c) a sample of a page border in the design of a grape vine. My Googly friends inform me that a complaint was filed at some point, but I am unable to find it at the designated link. So I'm working on guesswork here, and have dutifully removed the obvious offenders. If I'm wrong, I'm sure Google will be on my case toot sweet. Please feel free to continue....]

Dare I say it? With what little I had seen of politician Weiner in action, I had already found him a repugnant human being -- aggressively abrasive, posturing, filled with manufactured righteous anger when the cameras were rolling. Yawn. A television stereotype of the passionate politico, with an irritating whine. He exuded the kind of needy arrogance which made it not at all surprising to find out that he was addicted to seeking the approval of a bevy of long-distance fans, whom his fantasies had morphed into a personal harem that surely craved images of his excessively toned and waxed bod.

This guy needs treatment, and some restrictions on visitation with his child as yet unborn. He would probably suffer a lot were he incarcerated under the traditional circumstances, and for his own safety I'd recommend that, at worst, he should spend some time in a "country club" prison or wearing a house arrest anklet. He's a garden variety pervert, even if the garden is now virtual and global.

No doubt there will be speculation as to what extent the Congressman's last name was the subject of childhood teasing, and if that ridicule caused him to obsessively seek approval and respect. (Armchair psychology, awa-a-a-y!!!!)

Sigh -- here lies the only genuine tragedy of this entire sordid affair: the fact that vast numbers of people will now come to believe that the way you spell this....

[INSERT PICTURE OF FOOT-LONG HOT-DOGS HERE]

.... is W - E - I - N - E - R.

W - R - O - N - G.

This is a gross error which will rob the noble sausage of its ethnic origins and identity as a .... uh .... "son" of the gleaming Austrian city of Vienna, or WIEN, as it's spelled in German.

[INSERT NICE PHOTO OF VIENNA HERE]

A person, or thing, with origins in Vienna is a WIENER -- including that meaty dish we know as the WIENERSCHNITZEL.

I have no idea where Representative Weiner's forebears came from, or what exactly his last name might mean for them, but one thing is for certain: had he or his family insisted on the proper pronunciation of their last name, and perhaps even chosen to change its spelling in order to insure the preservation of its pronunciation, we would have spent the past few weeks chatting about the trials and tribs of a Congressman named VINER.

That's VINER.

Sorry, folks -- nothing funny to see here. No silly jokes with which to persecute little Tony Weiner from Queens.

VINER.

Got it?

Now class, review:

WEIMAR Republic

Kurt WEILL

WEIN, WEIB, und GESANG (Wine, Women, & Song)

WEINER

[INSERT DRAWING OF GRAPE VINES HERE]

(rhymes with VINER, Yiddish for "winemaker," Silesian German dialect for "wheelwright," like Wagner)

m'kay?

Can we just stop the weenie jokes? Can we give the kids a spelling test? Can we get back to the term "hot dog", with mustard and no sniggering? Please?

Pre-press conference headline at the bottom of the FOX News screen this afternoon: "Suspicious package found outside Rep. Weiner's office"

Enough with package, Tony. Time to call it quits.

2011-05-30T09:54:00.003-04:00

WORD OF THE [MEMORIAL] DAY:

[Thanks, as ever, to Michael Ramirez.]

WE REMEMBER:

Capt. Kyle Van de Giesen, USMC

1st Lt. Jared Landaker USMC

1st Lt. Travis Manion USMC
and
Lt. Brendan Looney USN

...together

And all those who "sleep in Flanders fields", wherever those fields may lie.

2011-05-20T22:35:00.006-04:00

PUT IT TOGETHER, AND WHAT HAVE YOU GOT?

BIPPITY, BOPPITY, BOO

The Anointed One, President Barry Hussein Obama, came down from the mountain-top and delivered his hopes and changes, for the Middle East in general and Israel/Palestine in particular, to a waiting world. There was some of this:

A lasting peace will involve . . . Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people.

Sounds lovely. Going to get a little awkward when it dawns on him that there is no such thing as a "Palestinian people" -- those who currently squat in a place called Palestine (yea, unto the third generation) are ethnically tied to Jordan, and have national origins there, or Syria, or some other where. Hey, funky moderns, if you think GENDER is a social construct, it ain't got nothin' on being Palestinian.

There was lots of other fun stuff about building two neighbour states, one of which (Israel) will consist of a little bowl whose rim is packed solid with people craving its destruction. Remember Bill Cosby's old routine about what would happen if the coin-toss that starts a football game were transferred to other historical conflicts? Custer comes to mind. As Cosby put it:

Cap'n Sitting Bull says that you and your boys gotta wait down at the bottom of the hill, while him and all the Indians in the world ride right down on ya.

That's what you get when you give up the Golan Heights, etc.

And, of course, the pre-1967 borders which Mr. Obama, in his boundless genius, has set as a pre-condition for negotiations, would basically hand over Jerusalem to the Palesto-Muslimite-Fatahamas peoples. That just can't be good.

As the Gateway Pundit reminds us, look how well they took care of the Church of the Nativity when they had it for a month -- now we want to give them Golgotha? Great plan, Oh Great One.

This, by far, my favourite passage from the speech. This is what a private prep school, Occidental/Columbia undergraduate, and Harvard Law School education gets you:

The fact is a growing number of Palestinians live west of the Jordan River. Technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself. A region undergoing profound change will lead to populism, in which millions of people, not just one or two leaders, must believe peace is possible. The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome. The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation.

Say wha'?

Professor Hugh Hewitt gets it right: "incoherent...Five sentences, five different subjects, none of them unambiguous, all of them pregnant, and ending with the declaration that what we have now if permanent occupation."

Another money quote:

The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state. And the duration of this transition period must be agreed, and the effectiveness of security arrangements must be demonstrated.

Professor Hewitt: "... and we must have unicorns."

Heh.

How 'bout a little fairy dust too?

The best part is that, while the Anointed One was rolling out the cups and tablespoons and pinches of surrender in his recipe for Israeli immolation, he was simultaneously embracing the Bush Doctrine of Missionary Democratizement among the Heathen -- the apex of which was [Allah be praised] the success of the democratic experiment in IRAQ.

In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy. There, the Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence for a democratic process. . . . Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region.

Does this guy have brass 'nads, or what?

Not that I'm arguing with him on this point. I'm just slapping myself upside the head to make sure I heard right.

Tip o' the hat to Bush 43? Yeah, sure.

Didn't take Israeli President Benyamin Netanyahu too long to ride into town, sit down the in the guy's own office, and spit right back at the O-man that he was having none of it, thank you.

There's more substance in this 6-minute clip than in 6 of Obama's speeches.

Said it in 2008, sayin' it again: I don't know how any Jew could ever vote for this man. [Obama, not O-Bibi]

But they will, in 2012 -- many, many of them will do it again. I don't get it.

Unless, of course, by November 2012 there is a smoking crater where Israel used to be. Then they may think twice about it.

2011-05-17T10:14:00.010-04:00

TIME TO GET SERIOUS

The Republican field of had-beens and side-show fire-eaters is blessedly narrowing: Huckster Huckabee declines, Trump opts for tinsel and tap-dancing, Romney and Gingrich stay technically in the race, but choose political calculation over principle and assume kami-kaze mode.

The day is fair, the plain is wide and green -- look to the high ground, and see where the young lions cast their eyes across the expanse, in anticipation of sauntering down the hill through the tall grass and into the fray: Ryan, Bachman, Christie, Rubio, West, go forward to nudge their noses up against the waiting Pawlenty and sharp-toothed Cain -- amid Palin's roars of encouragement and zeal issuing from the Alaskan heights [above and to the left on the map, but standing shoulder to shoulder and to the right among the Party].

Snarl, stalk, pounce.

Anybody seen Fred Thompson?

2011-05-12T11:37:00.000-04:00

PRESIDENT GINGRICH?

Uh, yeah. Right.

After years of odious behaviour with women, this was the topper. Remember it.

I am quite prepared to believe that Newt's conversion to Catholicism is sincere, as far as it goes. Or perhaps I would believe more deeply in it if it were accompanied by a realization that, as a fitting embrace of humility, it is his time to develop his talents as a historian and withdraw from the corrupting life of politics and public attention -- he has much, MUCH to atone for privately, and it is time for a more private life.

That he is prepared to welcome the full spotlight of a presidential run, and all that it will illuminate in his catalogue of personal sins, makes one wonder whether he has cultivated a sufficient sense of sin to consider his conversion complete. Let's remember his first response the first time he was questioned [for which he should have been amply prepared with an answer reliant on the Christian vocabulary of contrition], politely but pointedly, by a Christian journalist, about his dingy moral history. It was pathetic.

Newt Gingrich will never be President. The fact that he can't see this is evidence enough that he is still seeing through a glass darkly, and has a long way to go on the road to conversion. It's a road he should walk in solitude, not in the glare of public adulation. Sad.

Post-script: It is, of course, important to note that, by all accounts, Gingrich's personal history is pale compared to that of, say, Ted Kennedy, and it is flagrant injustice that Gingrich past sins will be illuminated with as much intensity as Kennedy's were hidden by a complicit press. But, at the end of the day, we must note that, after Chappaquiddick, everybody knew that Kennedy would never be President either, and, despite his best efforts, he never was. Despite the decades-long shielding by the complicit press, the American public did not forget, and Kennedy's fate was sealed at Martha's Vineyard -- thank God. If he'd been elected, I'd have had to move to Canada.

Oh wait. I did that anyway. But it was an apolitical, rather than political, move. That's my story and I'm sticking to it -- cuz it's true.

If I may quote myself:

Step out of the way, Newt. If it was ever your moment (and I doubt that), it has most assuredly passed. Make way for the New Kids on the Block (Kantor, Ryan, Rubio, even Palin. No Newt, no Mitt, no way. That's it.)

2011-05-11T01:20:00.005-04:00

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

New York Times Magazine runs an anti-military hit-piece as its cover story a week before the Navy Seals become national heroes for giving Osama Bin Laden some old-fashioned high-velocity "lead poisoning". Obviously not bothered by the fact that it's a re-hash of Rolling Stone's recent anti-military hit-piece. Heck, when your professional soldiers are drooling homicidal maniacs, one can't cover the same piece of news too often.

Nice cover.

Interestingly, the article appeared on the same weekend I took this picture. Here's how my son the Marine-beast passes his off-hours.

What a psycho.

2011-05-10T12:18:00.010-04:00

'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE O-DAY..."

Radio guru and tart-tonged funny-man Dennis Miller recently suggested that someone should write a parody of "The Night Before Christmas" to cover the Mother's Day events in Abbottabad, Pahkeestahn. On the fly he tried to name it, and came up with "Twas the Night Before Monday."

Here is my entry. Miller did not choose to post it. Epic Fail, if you ask me. See what you think.

I.
Twas the night before Monday,
And all through the yard,
Not a creature was stirring
Not even the guard.
My turban was hung
On a hook by the closet,
And I’d put on that bathrobe
With its secret cash deposit.
The children were nestled,
Three or four to a bed,
While visions of goatburgers
Danced in their heads.
And mama in her bed-socks
And pink silk chador
Had just settled down
With one eye on the door,
When up on the roof
There arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed
To see what was the matter.
Then away from the window
I ducked like a flash
And wondered if someone
Was stealing my stash.
The moon on the breast
Of my new teen-aged wife
Gave me major incentive
To cling to my life.
When what to my wondering
Eyes should appear
But a camouflaged hulk
In a mountain of gear,
With a bunch of his comrades
So lively and quick,
I just about pee’d
And I thought I’d be sick.
More rapid than eagles
To the rooftop they came.
And they grunted and shouted
And called me by name.
“You Bastard, you raghead,
You murdering f#ck --
You’ve bombed your last building
And humvee and truck!
So mumble to Allah,
‘Cause the last thing you’ll see
Is one bullet from New York,
And one from D.C.,
And then Pennsylvania,
And then we’ll be done.
You got nowhere to hide,
You got nowhere to run.”
They had hovered above,
Down their ropes they had shimmied.
They came in from all sides,
Everywhere but the chimney.
As I rubbed my red eyes
And collected my hat
They had filled up the bedroom
And cornered their rat.
They had night-vision goggles
And great big-ass guns,
And scared me so bad
I developed the runs.
Their rifle-sights glinted
And fixed on me tight.
Their cheeks were all green
And their teeth gritted white.
The beard on my chin
Turned as white as the snow,
And I knew I was done for,
With no place to go.
My skinny old face
And my lazy-boy belly
All shook when they laughed,
Like a bowlful of jelly.
I gave a weak smile
And a ‘whatever’ shrug.
The last thing I remember
Was the 45 slug.”

II.
Then up to the house-top
These warriors blazed,
Jumped into their choppers,
And skyward they raised,
With a sh#t-load of hardware
From Osama’s hut
And a body-bag ready
For his sorry butt.

And back home in Washington,
Deep under the White House,
All the President’s men,
And one President’s spouse,
Were all taking notes
[with a few variations!]
To spread to the press
And the rest of the nation.
There was one basic theme
On which there was agreement:
That Obama, like Beowulf,
Had gone after the demon.
Like Leonidas, Caesar,
King David, or Patton,
Like Joanie of Arc,
Or that genius Saladin,
He’d pounded his fist
And said “It’s a go!”
Then they gave him a footstool
To sit on for the show.
He had raced off the golf course
To watch it go down,
And the nation was grateful
He'd managed to be in town.
He spoke not a word
While the Seals were at work,
In fear that, beside them,
He’d look like a jerk.
But I heard him exclaim,
As they choppered from sight,

“Hot-damn! Who’d have thought it?
I guess Might can do Right!”

2011-05-07T11:14:00.003-04:00

HERE'S ONE FOR THE BOY

2011-05-04T13:16:00.010-04:00

POST POST MORTEM

A SOBERING REFLECTION, OUTSIDE THE WIRE

Self-embedded journo J.D. Johannes sends reactions from Helmand Province, Afghanistan. No dance of jubilation here.

NOTHING FROM NOTHING LEAVES NOTHING

Acerbic journo Christopher Hitchens (peace be upon him, plus a miraculous cure of his cancer through the intervention of Blessed John Henry Newman.....) weighs in on the Bin Laden take-down. Can't argue with anything here.

This just in: NO CORPSE PHOTO RELEASE

A caller to Rush, in a dandy New York accent, just described us as "a nation of milksops". Well, not the whole nation. Just the shrinking violets in this photo -- that's not everybody, mind you. Who's the smallest, most pouty-looking guy in the room? :

Rush just now asks the $64 billion question: if the Navy Seals had put women's underwear on Osama's head, would the administration and Dick Durbin have demanded the release of the photos?

Rush -- such a tease.

This just in:

Some IDIOT REPUBLICAN -- Mike Rogers, House Republican Intelligence Committee Chairman, speaks on 60 Minutes this Sunday.

Imagine how the American people would react if Al Qaeda killed one of our troops or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the internet.

Imagine!

Imagine.

Imagine.

Two words for you, Representative Rogers: Menchaca and Tucker.

Think I'll send Mr. Rogers an email to his Beltway neighborhood.

PRESIDENT DRAGGED KICKING AND SCREAMING
INTO HISTORY

A slight exaggeration, but only that. According to "White House Insider" this was not so much a "gutsy decision" on the President's part, but a decision forced down his guts by E.T. (Leon Panetta, resident grown-up) and others with a better-developed sense of world affairs. And the ditherer-in-chief still took 16 hours and a nap to make up his mind about it. We have that from Britain's Daily Mail -- and aren't we tired of hearing top-line U.S. stories only from people overseas?

White House Insider is an unidentified internet source, with a long history of exposing chaos and incompetence inside the Obama administration, whose reports are published on a few different third-party sites. He or she is apparently a big Hillary Fan, so not some plant from Fox News or other Traitors to America (/sarcasm on).

I just discovered him/her only yesterday, and can make no claims for validity, but have since found that someone as savvy and sage as Roger Simon pays serious attention, and has urged the dude/dudess to come out of the shadows.

Some background here. One to watch for, I'm guessing.

PAKISTAN CLAIMS TO HAVE INFORMED U.S.
ABOUT BIN LADEN HIDEOUT IN 2009

Again from the Brits, at Sky News.

We report, you decide.

Oh say can you see
Muslim sensitivities,
Which so proudly we hail
Facing east on our knees.

2011-05-03T11:59:00.026-04:00

SO HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND?

GLORIOUS

I'm embarrassed to admit that, with all the other events of this weekend, personal and global, I have neglected to devote any time to watching or reading about the Beatification of Pope John Paul II. But how wonderful that the events of his life, death, and growing hagiography have changed forever the complexion of "May Day".

JUST AS GLORIOUS

Blessed John Paul would approve of my excuse: just too busy gathering with the fam in sunny So-Cal to witness as new granddaughter was welcomed into the Body of Christ, waking up just long enough to "WAH!" her assent. A truly beautiful blossom on the family tree.

HITCHED WITHOUT A HITCH

Felicitations to the once and future King William of What's Left of the Empire, and future Queen Katherine. We wish them the best, despite the fact that it was a case of "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join in Holy Matrimony this man and this woman who have been shacked up together for at least three years that we know of, and undoubtedly making the beast with two backs for years before that....."

Considering the colossal marital failures of his immediate family, especially the tragic exploitation of his child-bride mother, one can hardly blame Prince Wills for creeping a slow and twisted path toward the altar of glaringly public commitment.

Anyway, lovely show (if musically under-served -- pretty boring choices on the whole -- "Jerusalem" all the more outstanding by comparison). And sincere hopes that the good side of Diana -- the one that enabled her boys to physically embrace the dark-skinned, the down-and-out, and the diseased, and to scrub toilets in Patagonia or eat dust in Afghanistan, and to wait in line behind the "commoners" at McDonald's -- will aid them both, toward transforming yet preserving the British monarchy for generations to follow.

NOT SO GOOD:

BUSH-WHACKED!!!

There have been scores of brilliant headlines in the past 48 hours, many of them via the always brilliant Instapundit. This may be my favourite:

Team Six: From Cheney's Secret Assassination Squad To Obama's Super-Awesome Clean-u p Crew

Team Six is the elite pocket of the Navy Seals that carried out the 40-minute raid that ended ten years on the hunt for September 11 Master-mind and Sugar Daddy, Osama Bin Laden.

The headline says it all: how every corner of political left in America, from the raving street-mobs to the cosmetically "civilized" denizens of federal congress, took one position while George W. Bush was President [an official position which, we hasten to add, they maintained aggressively during the Obama campaign of 2008, and during the formative years of the Obama administration], and took the totally opposite position, at least for one week in springtime, in order to support and praise a military mission ordered by President Barack Obama.

Let us be clear [as Rush Limbaugh has just now pointed out -- I paraphrase]:

The assassination raid which killed Osama Bin Laden was made possible ONLY by the kind of interrogations carried out years ago, during the Bush presidency, for which Obama and many others now wielding power in Washington D.C. would happily have prosecuted and at least impeached, if not imprisoned, the former President, Vice-President, and members of their administration.

And, had this assassination been carried out during the Bush administration, Obama and the voices of the left would have made the case that such an act would inevitably create and incite more terrorists, and make the world less safe.

No rational and/or literate human being can deny this. The record is the record.

[I suspect that Limbaugh will be putting his monologue up on the site this afternoon. Audio's of the past two days are on his Facebook page. Nobody can lay it out better.]

The record is the record. Or is it?

NBC's DAVID GREGORY BEGINS NEW ASSIGNMENT BROADCASTING FROM SOME DISTANT PLANET

What colour is the sky in your world, Mr. Gregory? Does it hurt your brain to engage in contortions too extreme for Cirque de Soleil?

[hat-tip Breitbart TV]

As one of my military family once put it (can't remember which one -- possibly the nephew), we went in there to win hearts and minds: one to the heart, two to the mind. Waitin' for the photos.

By the way....

ANYBODY REMEMBER
THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE?

Of course not. That was the point -- the point of releasing it when a third of the entire planet (literally) was preparing to watch Wills and Kate get married. The Prime Directive of political PR is that, if you have bad news, release it on a Friday when everybody's focused on their weekend fun. The Birth Certificate came out on a Wednesday, but heck, with the wedding on Friday, the excitement at fever pitch, and the pre-game shows in full swing, the weekend really started on about Wednesday, so timing was perfect......

HA HA HA!! THEY GOT US!!

WE THOUGHT THEY WERE USING THE WEDDING
TO BURY THE BIRTH CERT,

WHEN ALL THE TIME THEY HAD OSAMA
UP THEIR SLEEVE!!

Even if you believe the certificate is genuine, and Barry Soetero was birthed on Oahu [and I'm quite prepared to believe it -- though I was equally prepared not to, in which case I preferred it not be discovered], the issues surrounding Obama's childhood and the phony biography he has been selling for years [I'm not talking about Dreams From My Father -- that's just a symptom] are still an albatross, and not the sort of thing the President wants floating to the surface as he prepares to run in 2012.

It's still a mystery as to why Obama has spent nearly three years and a rumored $2 million resisting the release of the certificate. If his calculation was that the longer the birthers boil over about it, the more foolish they look, and the 2 mill is a small price to pay for keeping them in this condition -- well, that's actually a reasonable political strategem.

But maybe it's still risky to have them on the fringes of the campaign in the summer of 2012, so better defuse it earlier on, especially as fund-raising is gearing up. So release the certificate -- which shines a light on the fact that his mother was a gormless teenager at the time, and his father a 25-year-old itinerant student who may or may not have married her -- and do it well enough ahead of time, at a moment when it would be swamped by other news, and you have the best possible scenario for putting the matter to rest. Game, set, match. Advantage Obama.

That was the theory. Subsequent efforts by the Mainstream Media (and Obama himself) to paint the President as the bold captain who forged the plan to take out Osama, and who stood alone in that crossing-the-Delaware moment as he gave his manly utterance "Get 'er done" to cue his well-muscled ~~death squad~~ er, Special Ops team, are designed to make the swamping seem complete.

Good luck with that, scribblers. At the end of the day, there is way to much fibre optic cable lying around to allow you to stuff the inconvenient truths down the memory hole.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT:

Let's not forget one of the other famous deeds of Navy Seal Team Six. Our friends on the Left cheered and jeered when the Seals were subject to Court Martial for punching one of the world's most wanted terrorists, and giving him (ooooh) a bloody lip in the process of apprehending him, alive, for prosecution. All were exonerated, of course, because it was 100% B.S. Where were their fans in the sycophantasmic media then?

A peaceful and uneventful next weekend to one and all.

P.S. Last night Canada voted in a Conservative majority government, and despatched the Liberal Party (Canada's Natural Rulers, if you ask them) into political Siberia. Spring is here.

2011-03-30T12:37:00.005-04:00

MICHAEL YON

DEO GRATIAS

On the one hand, maybe we should congratulate that fine journalistic organ, Rolling Stone [see example of pioneering edgy cover art, left -- NO WARNING re: extremely graphic and disturbing image], for covering the story that no one else in the MSM will touch, for fear of making the Anointed One look bad from what's going on under his watch [see my post below] -- but wouldn't you know it, their version has to turn out to be a MASSIVE LIE.

How to we know? Because a guy in the know, on the scene, totally ahead of this story, has "called BULLSH*T" on Rolling Stone's heinous distortions.

Go ahead and read them here, if you have nothing better to do -- and be sure to watch the Motorcycle Kill video ["WARNING!...extremely graphic and disturbing images" says Rolling Stone!] to see what kind of MURDEROUS MANIACS we have running around in the American uniform.

I watched it, and found myself scratching my head as to what was the big deal.

Of course, as it turns out, the soldiers involved in that incident were never members of the so-called "kill team" which is the so-called subject of the article, and had turned their filmed record of this encounter over to Michael Yon a year ago because they had nothing to hide.

So if you really want to know what goes on, read Michael Yon as he calls bullsh*t on Rolling Stone -- which may not be gathering any moss, but certainly knows a lot about collecting slime.

2011-03-29T01:08:00.004-04:00

SAY WHAT?

I only heard part of el Presidente's Libya speech tonight. Managed to miss this little gem:

To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and - more profoundly - our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances, would have been a betrayal of who we are.

Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries.

The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

[emphasis added]

Well, some images of slaughter are more action-making than others, I guess.

And it is all about image, isn't it?

So glad the President was able to exercise a bit more patience rather than meddle in Iran's internal affairs, while this woman bled out on the streets of Tehran.

By the way, Mr. Obama...

2011-03-28T10:16:00.008-04:00

EXTRY! EXTRY! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE DISSES OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY!

As read in my Tridentine Missal, in lovely Douai English:

When a strong man armed keepeth his court, those things are in peace which he possesseth. But if a stronger than he come upon him and overcome him, he will take away all his armor wherein he trusted, and will distribute his spoils. He that is not with Me, is against Me; and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth.

So there.

Message: Carry a big stick. Soft walking optional. Strong horse/weak horse. Not complicated.

IN OTHER NEWS...

I took a running-on-vapor empty gas tank to the pump this morning and filled it to the brim. I stopped pumping in little squeezettes when the meter hit

$92

for 75.6 litres of petrol.

Gotta love that economic recovery.

Did I mention that up here in Canada we managed to suffer almost nothing of the recent recession? I'm just sayin'.

STORY OF THE DAY, IF NOT THE AGE

Arnold Ahlert gives a depressingly bang-on assessment of news management in the Age of Obama: How the MSM is doing a complete down-the-memory-hole dance with news of deliberate murder of Afghan civilians and coverup by a few bottom-feeders in the American military -- did so because they did it under the OBAMA REGIME, and it might, just might, reflect badly on the Annointed One.

Read it and fume. [hat-tip Jewish World Review]

2011-03-25T00:48:00.008-04:00

SECRETARY of SHTATE HILLARY CLINTON
ANNOUNCES CEASEFIRE!!! ....

...between NATO members

The FOX News guys (and the other networks, no doubt) had their camera trained on a large wood-panelled door and an empty podium, with the promise of an appearance at 6:15 p.m. by the Sec-State to make the announcement of a NATO decision to take CCC (committee consensus command) of the No-Fly-Zone over Libya.

By 6:45 the news panel was starting to suppress giggles and grope around for more commentary, but the podium remained empty. By the close of broadcast at 7:00, no-Hill-no-thrill. More giggling.

Eventually, Madame Secretary emerged with her triumphant announcement, laying out some sort of less-than-coherent plan, which the reader can untangle here.

UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU
TO WET YOURSELF AND HIDE UNDER THE BED

The more earth-shaking news of the day turned up on Pajamas Media, where Ed Driscoll relates the key graf of an Obama address deftly delivered below the radar on his stopover in El Salvador. I'm quietly meditating on whether his self-described dereliction of duty constitutes an impeachable offense. Check out this peach:

And we will continue to support the efforts to protect the Libyan people, but we will not be in the lead. That’s what the transition that I discussed has always been designed to do. We have unique capabilities. We came in, up front, fairly readily, fairly substantially, and at considerable risk to our military personnel. And when this transition takes place, it is not going to be our planes that are maintaining the no-fly zone. It is not going to be our ships that are necessarily involved in enforcing the arms embargo. That’s precisely what the other coalition partners are going to do.

["I'm proud to be an American -- where at least I know I'm free... From the halls of Montezu-uma to the shores Tri-po-leeee....."

Keep reading, it gets better.]

And that’s why building this international coalition has been so important because it means that the United States is not bearing all the cost. It means that we have confidence that we are not going in alone, and it is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally. And we will accomplish that in a relatively short period of time.

[Emphasis added.] Authority abdicated. Treachery confessed.

Just another day at the Oval Office.

2011-03-24T10:14:00.002-04:00

NEW TRENDS IN ARAB ANTI-SEMITISM

A nifty compilation from MEMRI, via Powerline.

Make some popcorn and gather the kids around the crystal set for that old-timey Saturday Night hit, "Fibber McGee and the Blood Libel".

New Trends in Arabic Anti-semitism from Henrik Clausen on Vimeo.

2011-03-23T12:35:00.021-04:00

If you need a break from thinking about the three-ring circus in Libya (as the President clearly does), take a gander at...

EPISODE #257 OF

"WHAT IN GOD'S NAME [ ! ] IS THAT WOMAN WEARING?"

"Fashion Icon" FLOTUS Michelle Obama swept through a swath of countries south of the equator sporting a series of outfits which, as usual, leave us, uh, wondering.... And she seems to have been put in charge of dressing her children in equally oddball concoctions.

The Fabulous Tom and Lorenzo weigh in with sensible opinions.

A pageant of 95 testimonies to the worst/weirdest-dressed First Lady in history -- masses of misses, and a few hits -- and hits are big ones, showing that with the right designs Mrs. O can wear dashing colours and cuts like few women can. So why has she accumulated such a collection of ill-fitting little cardigans that can spoil anything she puts on?

FashionFoisGras, shows what some of the outfits are supposed to look like.

(On the right: A great dress ($1000), if properly worn by someone who wears good shoes and stands up straight -- in the wrong hands, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a Hudson's Bay blanket.)

It don't "sit" well or fit well.

How are things in Guacamole?

One of two cute sundresses worn down south. Both great dresses, but too little-girl to be worn in any but the most informal settings, not for tarmac arrivals by the President or official engagements.

Seems like a great dress. Curses, spoiled again! Yet ANOTHER crap necklace.

Now, wasn't that fun, ladies? Meow, meow, meow.

Much more fun than applying one's brain matter to the current crisis-es-eez, brought about by the presence of a swell-headed student council president in the Oval Office with his lanky, free-throw hands limply grasping the reins of power as leader of the Free World. God help us.

I defer to Instapundit. Here, here, here.

2011-03-19T16:26:00.010-04:00

UNITED STATES RIDES
THE RUNNING BOARDS OF HISTORY

SEC-STATE CLINTON BOASTS:
"WE DID NOT LEAD THIS"

PREZ OBAMA AFFIRMS:
"WE WILL NOT DEPLOY ANY AMERICAN TROOPS
ON THE GROUND"

Brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it folks?

The world's last remaining superpower treads water and waits for the FWENCH to take the lead -- and they do.

Not so super.

So the French have already gone airborne and dropped their first package, to be joined by the Brits, the Canadians, the Danes, the Norwegians, and various other players to be named later -- forces which, all combined, aren't half what is needed to enforce a no-fly zone, according to military talking heads on the tube.

The U.S. now maintains command and control of the operation, but will [PROUDLY] surrender the con to a coalition committee, or some such thing.

Kinda gets ya right here, don't it?

Meanwhile, certain well-trained pilots on a certain American aircraft carrier twiddle their thumbs in nearby waters, wondering why their C-in-C has plunked them unceremoniously into the rumble seat.

Well, we'll see how long this long-distance involvement lasts -- over a hundred Tomohawk missiles have departed their Mediterranean-based chutes, as President Obama pushes the red button on "Operation Keep Your Head Down".

Unconfirmed reports tell us that the Commander-in-Chief, currently on tour in a production of Flying Down to Rio,

has been heard to mumble,

"I got me some of these...."

"Now if I can just grow me a pair of these."

BTW: Anybody heard from Code Pink?????

Damn you, George W. Bush!!!!!

2011-03-11T21:09:00.022-05:00

A WHOLE NEW MEANING TO THE TERM

"EARTHSHAKING"

UPDATE: video has been removed from the YouTube. Well, it is pretty disturbing. Try here.

Don't worry, folks -- the United States Navy is on the case, surfing the tsunami to deliver the necessaries. I have it on the highest authority. (My baby boy.)

Meanwhile, back on "solid ground":

OBAMA WISHES HE WERE PRESIDENT OF AN ASIAN WORKERS' PARADISE

Gee, ya think?

Governing a country full of people who refuse to be coerced and ignored can be such a pain. There was nothing in the Alinsky manual about putting up with pesky voters' expectations.

Sheesh!!! Can I play through?

And at the other, er, extreme: some people just
keep wanting to be president of the U.S.

NEWT, THE HELPLESSLY PATRIOTIC -- JUST GIVE IT UP, DUDE!

Jeffrey Goldberg, over at the Atlantic, is properly disdainful of Newt Gingrich's limp attempt to explain away his, er, "colourful" (read: "tawdry") personal history. Apparently he got distracted from his duty to be a decent human being by the seductive siren song of patriotism.

Puh-le-e-eze.

Step out of the way, Newt. If it was ever your moment (and I doubt that), it has most assuredly passed. Make way for the New Kids on the Block (Kantor, Ryan, Rubio, even Palin. No Newt, no Mitt, no way. That's it.)

I believe his name was Barry Maguire, and once upon a time he wrote:

THE EASTERN WORLD, IT IS EXPLODIN' --
VIOLENCE FLARIN', BULLETS LOADIN'

So, class, let's review: these are some of the images we've been meditating on for the past three years. Keep them in mind during your daily perusal of the Drudge Report.

Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, piracy in Somalia, slaughter in Darfur, Al Qaeda in Yemen -- and the strange shrunken spectator watches the World on Fire.

This is how we "Win the Future". Yeah?

2011-03-10T00:14:00.003-05:00

MANLY WISDOM FROM A BRITAMERICANUCK

Don't know what's been up with columnist-to-the-world Mark Steyn -- some 'health issues' apparently -- but he has surfaced and is swinging away in full form.

He whacks another demographic analysis out of the park, while giving us his latest assessment of the American Chief Executive and C-i-C: 'The strange shrunken spectator who serves as president of the United States.'

Hey, he said it, not me!

Wish I had.

2011-03-09T22:52:00.004-05:00

WOMANY WISDOM FROM A CANUCKESS

National Post's Barbara Kay sums up the Palin Revolution. Nicely, of course.

Back in Hogtown (Toronto) and recovered from big green ear infection.

Watching my new favourite Canadian TV show, Republic of Doyle (family detective business in St. John's, Newfoundland). Big caper about the theft of the famous "Veiled Madonna" from the Basilica. Get one for yourself from Victorian Trading Co.

Not cheap, though [$250]. And not available for shipping to Canada. Heh.

2011-02-09T16:09:00.013-05:00

THE NEW MATH:

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

x (CARTER FOREIGN POLICY)

+ EGYPT

÷ LATEST POLLS

= UTTER INCOHERENCE

= HELL ON WHEELS

= BOOGAH BOOGAH

TO THE POWER OF TEN

2011-02-02T11:46:00.006-05:00

NEW DEFINITION OF "MESS":

OBAMA ADVISER TO DECORATED GENERAL
IN MESS DRESS:

"MORE WINE, PLEASE"

Valerie Jarrett, "Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement" [I think that's another term for Chicago-Daley-Machine-Crony-Without-Portfolio], attended the Alfalfa Club Dinner. In a quest for more wine, she apparently tossed a glance over her shoulder and made her requirements known to nearest guy in a short jacket, mistaking him for the Little Man from the Village.

He turned out to be a much-beribboned General in some branch of the American armed forces, properly done up in his mess dress, of this sort:

The man in question was not only an officer but a gentleman. He dutifully fetched the requested beverage, delivered it to Madam, and then proceeded to sit down at her table. Do you think she had the wit to feel uncomfortable? Our correspondent maintains a polite silence.

[hat-tip/ Daily Caller via Instapundit]

NEWSFLASH!

Goundhog Day 2011 snowstorm is caused by:

GLOBAL WARMING.

Al said so.

[hat-tip Drudge]

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

You remember Egypt.

2011-01-30T21:21:00.011-05:00

HOTTEST THING ON TV
IN THE LAST MILLION YEARS

For obvious reasons.

It's sharp and witty and funky and gritty and chock-a-block with suspense -- and there are these two guys, a Mutt and Jeff combo, each strangely endearing in his own weird way.

There's this fellow here, Martin Freeman, who plays the eminent Dr. Watson [here in the 21st century, he's a demobilised army doc wounded in Afghanistan -- oh! that's what he was in the 19th century too]. He's dry and a bit broody, but trying very hard to be normal, which is hopeless when you get a look at his new roomie. And he's as cute as a hobbit -- which works in his favour, since he's playing Bilbo Baggins in the hobbitty prequel (if it ever gets made).

But the real headline is the overnight blast of stardust lingering over and around the other fellow, whose name sounds like a spell taught at Hogwort's: Benedict Cumberbatch. [gesundheit] He's utterly brilliant and original as the all-new blackberry-toting Sherlock Holmes.

Suddenly the adolescent world is swooning over this tall stringbean with an angular face above a near-Leno jaw, who's been picking up acting awards and publicity by the bushelful. He's the hottest thing going, friends -- he's on top of the world, what could he possibly want that he doesn't already have?????

Answer: kids. Well, that was unexpected. He's had a co-vivant for years, who better watch out, because there could soon be girls lining up around the block ready to have his baby. Hmmm, try to imagine.....

That's it! All the little Cumberbundles will look like Freddie Highmore! Could do worse.

Three TV movies have been aired so far, and we'll have to wait [we can't wait!] until fall for the next instalments. Hurry, hurry, Mutt and Jeff. And congratulations on the well-earned success, Mr. Cumberbuns. You've got the world on a string --- SO WHY THE LONG FACE?!!!

Ha ha ha har har hee hee hee.

Watch for it -- when the leaves start to fall.

2011-01-27T11:16:00.002-05:00

OH MAMA!

PALIN REDUCES ENTIRE SOTU TO ITS ESSENCE

"Winning the Future" = WTF

Too funny. Too true.

2011-01-26T10:53:00.018-05:00

UNLIKE THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

I REMEMBER SPUTNIK

It was 1957, we lived in Anderson, Indiana; my sister was in school and I wasn't. She came home with her latest art project, a cork ball studded with toothpicks, painted tourquoise blue and sprinkled with glitter. The world had officially ushered in The Space Age, and America was WAY behind.

What a perfect image for the condition to which Barack Obama has willfully reduced the United States of America.

As the rest of the world wheels and deals for oil money, and China collects its billions by flooding the nation with bright shiny trinkets, the United States stands tall in its sophomore's purity: oil is off-limits; endangered beetles and public sector workers are comfy on a pillow of privilege -- regular guy workers are asked to delight in the prospect of years on the dole; the military is stretched and slated for reduced numbers with which to act out super-sensitive Rules of Engagement; Orwell's language police preaching 'civility' with all the politesse of the Seven Words You Can't Say On Television; government lumbers on under a party and a president whose grasp of their job is to economy and geo-politics what 'Professor' Harold Hill's 'Think System' is to music.

The President has literally bowed and abased himself to every unsavoury global thug he could seek out. He has done everything in his power to turn the nation of pioneers into one of indentured servants. He has lately wined and dined our monetary master, who [Hu] leered with satisfaction and repaid our hospitality by stopping just short of taking a poop on the banquet table.

And the NASA budget has been slashed to where we'd need a bank loan to produce a Sputnik. I'm not even sure we could afford the cork ball and the toothpicks.

I popped in and out of the SOTU panto last night [Pillars of the Earth was on another channel] because, between the self-congratulatory hot-air issuing from the podium and the robotic jack-in-the-box action out on the floor, it has all become meaningless ballet to the delicate strains of Stockhausen.

I have this mental image of one of those tennis-ball lobbing machines for practicing one's serve solo, except this machine is center-stage on the congressional daïs and what it's lobbing has been collected, bolus by bolus, from the loose hay on the stable floor. Out on the floor, standing is actually the normal position, and the sitting is a ducking reflex. [By the way, if your tennis ball server remains in this position for more than four hours, consult a physician.]

Guess I'll do my patriotic duty and, after a suitable period of mourning, read the text of the SOTU address, unimpeded by all the jumpin' jack flash.

By the way, how did that Sputnik thing work out for the Big Russian Bear, anyway?

Ahh..... Miracle on Ice.

Henderson scores for Canada.

Da, Da, Ca-na-da -- Nyet, Nyet, So-vi-et.

Big Sputnikin' Deal.

Heady days.

So, as long as we're into 'the big con' and 'never let a crisis go to waste' -- well, listen to the master. No Sputniks required.

2011-01-20T21:52:00.008-05:00

MEMO TO FILE -- NOTE TO SELF

This is what it looks like when somebody practices what the President preaches:

Dr. Gosnell A rrested for Murde ring 7 Babies Who Survived Abortion – A Practice Barack Obama Supports & Has Voted For 4 Times

And on a related note,

PDS*/"Palinoia" DIAGNOSED AND 'SPLAINED

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal has the goods on Why They Hate Her [Sarah Palin] -- he's not the first to say it [some of us have been making this case for two years now], but he says it well, and that's not easy coming from a man.

It's not very complicated, really. Women hate her more than men, and that's because she's a good-looking, successful, professional woman with a good-looking supportive non-metrosexual husband; she's held good jobs, made good money, kept her figure, pursued her dreams, and had five children.

That's not supposed to happen at the turn of the 21st century. There was this myth for awhile that a woman could "have it all", but most women just couldn't shake the biggest obstacles to their success: men, and kids. They just seemed hopelessly drawn to these corrosive forces. And when they found themselves stuck, trapped by traditional domestic shackles, who was in their corner but the friendly abortionist, the sine qua non of modern female ambition?

But Sarah Palin got on with life and career and family without the services of the abortionist, and even dares to suggest that other women ought to do the same -- even when they discover that they are set to be burdened by the greatest obstacle of all, a handicapped child.

Sarah Palin is hated partly because she's an ordinary woman (and doesn't pretend to be otherwise) who has done extraordinary things; but mostly because of the most ordinary thing she ever did: she let this child live. 90% of women in her position had their children destroyed.

They're out there. They know who they are. And they are the driving force behind *Palin Derangement Syndrome.

2011-01-19T11:52:00.005-05:00

BYRON YORK PUTS CNN

IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Over at the Washington Examiner, Byron York does an in-depth analysis of CNN's usage of the Crosshairs metaphor in just the one month prior to the Tucson shootings.

And, like all sane people, Byron thinks it's nothing to go all wobbly about, like John King did on a recent broadcast.

He's all, like, Dude! It's okay! Um.... KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY!

See, everybody's got a crosshairs fantasy. Some were actually good ideas....

Others were a form of inflammatory and uncivil rhetoric responsible for the death of Marcel Marceau. I knew it!

2011-01-12T15:31:00.010-05:00

"... after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live."

Shakespeare -- Hamlet

The air has been thick with ill reports since last Saturday's murder spree in Tucson, most of them lazy and brainless slanders proffered as explanations for Grade-A insanity. I will make no attempt to behave like a news source, since others have done it better already [the usual kudos to clearing houses such as Instapundit and American Thinker], nor to catalogue the long list of journalists, pundits, and politicos who have gone so far beyond the borders of partisanship that the wonderful neo-verb "beclowning" is inadequate to the situation, and we must settle for the more mundane "disgraced" to describe what, in their foaming extremism, they have done to themselves.

As a minor bump on the cosmic log, I have enjoyed the luxury of waiting out a suitable period of time, to pluck some actual facts from out of the whirlwind of shrieking din, and have chosen to draw attention to this morning's interview with Zach Osler, an old friend of the accused [Jared Loughner], and a sweet-looking young man who has taken on an unnecessary and onerous burden of guilt for having failed to intervene where others, in genuine positions of responsibility, should have done the job.

The mad rush from left field to score political points off the Tucson tragedy has manifested itself in safe generalities, making passing use of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by name, but avoiding too much reference to the few other victims whose names have been released, most particularly the remarkable, beautiful 9-year-old symbol of all that it means to "choose life", the late and much lamented Christina Taylor Green -- born in the national shadow of September 11, 2001 -- died in the radiant morning of her little life, in the instant of one jerk on the trigger. [Video of a very moving but dignified interview with her father has been rolled up by ABC -- transcript of much of it is here.]

It took no time at all for the twisted perverts of the Fred Phelps Westboro "Baptist Church" clan to seize this particular tragedy as an opportunity to crow their deranged message to the world, and quickly announce their utterly incomprehensible plan to picket the funeral of this lovely child -- an act so grotesque that even their jittery clots of synapses recoiled at it within a couple of days. [Or was it just the devil's bargain -- the offer of radio airtime in Phoenix and Toronto, if they called off the hounds and bitches at the Green funeral -- that caused them to relent??]

The creatures have now re-set their sites on the funeral of the other high-profile victim, District Judge John Roll. It's not yet clear whether the Patriot Guard Riders will officially perform their usual intervention services, but rest assured there will be patriot riders who will guard the victim families from being "Phelpsed".

And may all the slain innocents, victims of their interest in the free exercise of rights among a free people, rest in the sleep of peace.

SATURDAY

While all this mayhem was going down in Arizona, back in Pennsylvania, a soldier came home.

Another death -- a peaceful end to a long and ordinary life -- briefly interrupted by violent conflict, grueling hardships, and inexpressible courage

MAJOR RICHARD WINTERS,
leader of the Band of Brothers
Dead at age 92

It's a good week to remember the nobility to which ordinary men can rise when called upon to be of service to their fellows. God welcome and bless Dick Winters as he strides into the heavenly reunion of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne, who drifted into and around Ste. Mere Eglise in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, and forever planted their boots in the history of man's humanity to man. And God bless writer Stephen Ambrose for reminding a wider world of what they did.

Read and salute, here here here and even better here

If (and only if) you have reason to be there, Major Winters will be memorialized on (appropriately) St. Joseph's Day, March 19, at his church in Hershey, PA. The public is invited, but, for God's sake, make a hole and leave room for his Band of Brothers.

Requiescat in pace.

I love a boy in uniform.

2011-01-07T19:52:00.010-05:00

SURPRISING FOOTNOTE TO PREVIOUS POST

#1 Son has just arrived home from deployment, having spent some months as a resident Marine on a Navy Amphibious Readiness mini-aircraft carrier thingy. We had a brief conversation which touched on baby brother's former commander, the notorious OPH (Owen P. Honors -- see below).

Level of sympathy on the part of our Marine for the predicament of Captain Honors?

Absolute zero.

XO's are supposed to be iron-gut enforcers, not the class clowns with an inexplicable amount of time on their hands. That is all.

Well, I defer to the expert.

All I would add (my two-cents) is that, since Honors has long since ceased his childish shenanigans, had never been reprimanded for them by anyone until now, and has already been a successful commander of another aircraft carrier, the USS Mount Whitney, for more than two years without complaint or incident or repetition of questionable conduct that we know of, I think the statute of limitations on former jackass-dom should be considered passed.

A reprimand on record, some sort of probation, a fine, or just the public embarrassment would seem to be sufficient punishment. And if what he did was so terrible, his then-commander should receive equal, if not greater, punishment for his negligent approach to discipline.

Marines. Hard-ass. It works.

2011-01-05T12:27:00.014-05:00

DEAR UNITED STATES NAVY:

GROW A PAIR

[scroll down for UPDATE]

Captain Owen Honors was considered the best man for the job, and had been on the job since last May.

The best man for the job until last weekend, that is.

Now, just a week or so from deployment to missions over Afghanistan, MY SON’S commanding officer on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise will be the second best man for the job.

THANKS A HEAP, UNITED STATES NAVY.

Why this sudden change of heart, oh fickle lover? Because Captain Honors is a career Navy guy, with all that this implies, and the Navy culture is what it is and always has been – rough, coarse, vulgar, edgy, raunchy, excessive, pushing the envelope, anything to get you through the long and tedious hours at sea between the moments of knife-edge tension and microscopic finesse points on the dial that launches a $40 million aircraft off an ironing board.

What a shock to learn that modern technology has created new ways for bored men in the military to channel their inner Belushi. [You remember Belushi, folks -- that frantic, over-the-top comedian who was, and remains, one of the hottest talents ever to win the admiration of hip, ivy-league, liberal sophisticates as they toked up on a Saturday night when classes were over, probably at their prof's house. That guy -- the one who went on to fame in various instalments of Animal House.]

Military command has always taken a sideways glance away from certain aspects of the day-to-day grind among the rank and file. Camp-following concubines have been around for more centuries than we can count. In HMS Pinafore, W.S. Gilbert heaps hilarious mockery upon the land-locked Admiralty Lord who professes profound shock, and sends the Captain to his quarters, because the word “damme” [that’s “damn me”] was uttered within earshot of the ladies – it was Gilbert’s way of saying, “Dude, this is the NAVY – are you F#&*-ing kiddin’ me???”

[UPDATE: Here's the opening appearance of the Captain, with the first super-absurd send-up of the notion that any British sailor might be called "exceedingly polite" and refrain from "bad language or abuse". Ironically, this particular clip also incorporates the Captain's later fall from grace, and demotion, caused by something only slightly more ridiculous than a lewd sense of humor: the discovery that he was born a peasant instead of an aristocrat. Enjoy.]

What about the British tradition of the Concert Party for their soldiers in the Great War? There were always a few, er, transsexual moments involved. The Canadians even had a troop of entertainers called the Dumbbells, whose skits en travestie were legendary.

And remember the cross-dressing Honey Bun number from South Pacific? Classic Navy hijinks. [Apparently this stuff is perfectly acceptable if you're Alec Baldwin doing it at Carnegie Hall.]

And can you say "WWII Nose Art"? Google it, and see if it twits your tweeter.

The arenas of battle in both world wars were serviced by tent-city brothels that were more or less official encampments.

I could go on and on.

So when Captain Honors is demoted and his career destroyed for being part of some crude, sophomoric home videos [yes, he even eats the Oh Henry bar masquerading as a turd from the toilet – whoa, TREASON!!!!!] created for the crew’s amusement three or more years ago when he was the XO on the Enterprise, all I can do is quote my paraphrased Gilbert above, and say “Are you F#&*-ing kidding me?” Everybody, and that means everybody (hello, Captain) knew that these videos were part of the XO’s movie night, and they could take them or leave them.

Not so lucky was my dad in 1945, an innocent Catholic boy from Duluth who could not escape the pornography of the day, when a copy of the banned book Tropic of Capricorn was obtained at some port and then read aloud over the public address system to while away the hours at sea. No freedom of choice, no religious exception there, swabbies – and hardly possible without the full consent of the captain of Destroyer Escort 152.

My father emerged from the Coast Guard with a lifelong revulsion at “dirty” language and entertainment. He’d have been delighted to be on a ship where it was optional, or to have an XO who clearly recognized the true absurdity of the constant invoking of the “F-bomb” among Naval personnel (one of then-XO Honors’ well-edited sketches in the viral video).

So did Captain Honors really lose his livelihood over the vulgarity and periodic sexism of his “morale” videos? No, of course not.

He lost it over the repeated use of one word: “gay”. You know it, and I know it, world. The video opened a window (for the twelve people in the universe who had been unaware) on the Navy version of the military culture that has traditionally been dismissive and scornful (if not downright hostile) to homosexual men. (Lesbians, I suspect, have a different and less high-profile experience in their much more recent presence among military out in the field.)

Yes, friends, buy a paper – that’s the culture. Destroying Captain Honors may temporarily appear to have closed the window that the video opened, but the culture will remain – that’s guaranteed. In fact, when the guys below decks see a popular, effective, and highly accomplished XO sacrificed on the altar of gay-positive Political Correctness, it’s fair to predict that the culture (one which, by the way, is devoted to mocking everybody in one way or another) will simply stiffen its resolve and dig in, with the dismissive tilting more towards the hostile. I’ll be curious to find out.

And I will find out, because my real concern will be MY KID, heading off into enemy territory with the next-best Captain at the helm, on less than two weeks’ notice. Or perhaps they’ll delay deployment while the new guy finds his sea-legs – an even more genius move on the part of upper management.

I’m sure Captain Honors wasn’t the only guy available who has what it takes to command an aircraft carrier. Presumably his replacement will be qualified. But the cost of chucking out a highly respected and much beloved known quantity, at the very very last minute, goes extremely deep, and could prove to be a cost that will affect the good order of the ship, under very dangerous conditions.

Forget the possible deepening of hostility to homosexuals in the military -- what about a general loss of confidence, reaching well beyond the 6,000 residents of the Enterprise township, as a whole branch of the armed forces is forced to wonder, "What the hell kind of Navy am I in, anyway? Do they really have my back?"

Let us hope, and pray, that all involved will just dig in, rise to the occasion, and get ‘er done.

But I will expect a full report on all the repercussions from MY KID upon his return. And if there’s been any erosion of the good order of the ship, I am Mom, hear me roar.

Food for thought:

Can you be a good XO and make naughty videos with your underlings? I will let the better-informed voices of Blackfive address that question.

Many folks have been pointing out that, once upon a time, the ultimate penalties were reserved for officers who (a) negligently got their people killed, (b) negligently destroyed their vessels, (c) flagrantly disobeyed orders, (d) wantonly played footsie with the enemy. Stuff like that. What kind of an officer was Owen P. Honors?

Mrs. Grundy rides again, in the person of the notorious Amy Goodman. Check out this smirking latter-day Salem witch-sniffer, this woman with face like an old boot and a flagpole up her [BLEEP]. Is she not straight out of some nightmare film about sadistic nuns? Clearly she's shocked, SHOCKED, that there are profanities, vulgarity, and sex-talk on a Navy vessel at sea! WEEK AFTER WEEK!!! [Says the Yale Law School professor in his earth-toned civvies: "An aircraft carrier is not a fraternity house." What's your evidence for that statement?!]

One or two media outlets are irresponsibly referring to this episode as "Tailhook scandal", presumably showing off their vast knowledge of aircraft carrier mechanics. Sorry, folks, but Tailhook scandal is a virtually copyrighted name for a particular bad scene, involving criminal assaults. So knock it off. Let's see what J.D. Gordon, a former Navy public affairs officer familiar with the actual Tailhook affair, has to say about the present Navy surrender.

And we will take note of the Support Captain Owen Honors Facebook page, which reportedly has jumped in “likes” from 1200 to over 20,000 in the past few days.

We must also ask, was Corinne Reilly, reporter for the Hampton Roads-based Virginian-Pilot (she who broke XO Honors' video story, of such earth-shattering importance) totally ALL OVER the Ft. Hood massacre story, with all its Virginia connections? Uh.....not so much. She was right on top of a 4-part PTSD story (army abandons violent vet) and a Navy SEAL story ( SEALS prosecuted for prisoner abuse) this past year though, showing great interest in military affairs. Are we seeing a pattern here?

People seem to think it only fair that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas -- with the clear implication that some real nasty stuff may have gone down, along with a lot of tequila. And what has Vegas ever done for the safety and security of the United States and the world? But what happens on a fine old ship carrying thousands of the world's volunteer protectors, in often hostile waters, sending planes over hostile lands -- well that's dirty laundry for the international public washline. Nice. Thanks Corinne -- you're a credit to womanhood.

Would I want to be Owen Honors' wife? Not my call. Would I want him in charge of my boat? Not my call either. My kid's call. I'll wait to hear the fallout.

That is all. Dis-miss.

2011-01-04T12:24:00.004-05:00

IT'S A NEW YEAR,

MAYBE A NEW COUNTRY

After decades of attempted genocide by the Muslim north visited upon the Christian south, January 9, 2011 will see a referendum for separation in South Sudan. Should the vote for independence succeed, it will be interesting to see whether the world's professional do-gooders will be prepared to support the new free people of the south when, as is almost inevitable, they will be attacked from the north without a pause for breath in the ongoing campaign of slaughter -- a campaign so far ignored by most of the world because it has been a religious war against Christians, and who cares about crap like that? Ask a Copt in Egypt, and they'll tell you: nobody much.

Here's the bold referendum cheer, for those in the south with electricity.

Everybody say your prayers.

[hat-tip Gateway Pundit]