HELLO BLOG

Bless me, Oprah, for I have sinned.  I have been unfaithful to my blog with that cheap and easy tramp, Facebook.  Can't help it -- I am weak and selfish, and FB satisfies my urge to pontificate quickly and without prescription medication.



THE LEMON IS IN PLAY

Mine favourite actroid of late, Balancebeam Cabbagepatch, has taken it upon himself to portray a first-class sh#t, in the form of Wikileaker and professional misanthrope Julian Assange, Ecuador's "Man Who Came to Dinner", in some Dreamworks (no great surprise) flick due out in the fall.  Can't imagine what would drive anybody to identify his own face with that of the self-sodden creep who cares not a whit whose lives he may ruin, or even cause to be lost, by making government documents indiscriminately public.  Fortunately, he deals in wholesale bulk product, most of which is such a bore that even the world's homicidal bad-boys probably can't be bothered to sift through it all -- but you never know when our strange world may produce a terrorist with as many personality disorders as the Ass-hat himself, who decides to plough through the files and find a way to kill off one of my kids or his military brethren. 

Julian Ass-hat is a scourge and a curse upon civilization, and I wonder how many of those involved in bringing him unmerited cinematic attention would appreciate having their addresses, phone numbers, bank accounts, incomes, family members' homes, and private email exchanges published just because Julian knows that he can.  He's apparently quite pissed off about the film, so if I were Cumberbatch and Co., I'd be sniffing out a witness protection program.

The Cumberboy is now one of the highest-demand talents in his profession, and seems to be accepting as much work as a human bean can handle.  This is a two-fold problem:  (a) he is in serious risk of being over-exposed, and if the Assange pic is a genuine lemon (which is entirely possible, since Ass-hat is well past his best-before date for his 15 minutes of ill-gotten fame), there will be the sound of a massive dull thud just as his star is in ascendancy; and (b) if he doesn't take a break he'll never meet a nice girl and settle down and have lots of lovely children, which he's always saying he wants to do. 

[See what happens when there's Too Much Information floating around the inter-webs?]

Far better to apply one's long face and cupid's bow lips to a more fitting biography. 

Anyone thought about Mr. Clusterbomb for a life of Albrecht Dürer?

Can you see it?  Huh?  Huh?

A WORLD OF ASH


Every so often there's a book that makes you do something stupid, like read it straight through until 4:30 in the morning. I've just finished doing that with Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. I decided to read it because I had decided to see the movie (opening last week, starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee). And, having read Rick Groen's review in the Globe and Mail, I decided that I'd prefer to take the "Biblical cadences" with me into the theatre if they weren't going to be there from the screen.

I'll admit it -- I'm a fan of the Viggo, and have watched not a few weak movies based on his strong appearance in them. He came to my attention, of course, as Lord Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, though I realized at the time how unexpectedly he had previously commanded my attention in Witness, in which he had no lines! -- as well as other films in which he had floated memorably at the margins: Carlito's Way, Crimson Tide.

I skipped seeing what turned out to be his first Oscar-nominated role (who knew? I wasn't paying any attention) in Eastern Promises, because it was another work by the icky-creepy David Cronenberg, who did everything in his ghoul's bag'o'tricks to undermine both the good acting and the strands of significance in his earlier History of Violence. [I waxed eloquent, voluminous, and theological on what that film could have been about in more adept hands, here.] I'll probably break down and rent Eastern Promises, now that I know it was Oscar meat.

I've read one review of The Road which makes the correct point that the most dominant image in the book is that of the ubiquitous presence of ash. And the film is criticized, at its most basic, for failing to work with that image -- for an inexplicable paucity of ash.

If that's the case, I'm disappointed already, because while reading the book I couldn't shake that image -- an image burned into the consciousness of anyone who was watching the news on a September morning about eight years ago.


In McCarthy's book, the particular apocalyptic event which is catalyst to the narrative is not described, so the reader can't be sure whether it was a natural or (as the current Secretary of Homeland Security likes to call them) a man-made disaster. The few trickles of backstory McCarthy allows lean towards an indication that some sort of nuclear-weapon event is the likely cause, but the ambiguity permits one to concentrate on the more weighty themes of familial love, hope, endurance, and grace, rather than on geo-political questions and their partisan implications. This is entirely to the good.

It is to be hoped that the Viggo, famous for his noodle-headed pronouncements about the political implications of Lord of the Rings, will keep to himself any cause-and-effect relationships he might see between the story of The Road and the Evil Bush/Cheney Conspiracy, which is still getting under his skin even as his retires his 'Kucinich for President' bumper sticker.

For if there is any parallel which suggests itself, it has to be that vision of the world of ash which was created in 2001, across a limited number of city blocks, where fires raged for just 100 days, but which opened a wound that has yet to heal.

If we have reason to fear that the global firestorm and the world of ash will some day cover a wider horizon than one corner of Manhattan, it will not be because there was a show of 'cowboy' strength under a war-mongering Bush administration, but because there has been a dumbfounding roll-out of deliberate postures of weakness, hopping from one nation to another, on the part of the Obama government.
































I find it impossible, for even a moment, to contemplate a world of ash without thinking of Manhattan on September 11, and Beirut before, and London, Madrid, Mumbai, and Bali since, wondering where the ashes will fall next. Still, that is a political scenario grounded in pragmatism rather than grace, and it should take a backseat when considering the virtues of The Road, on film and on the page.


Having gotten all this off my chest, I will look forward to watching the film in the penitential spirit of Advent, which is now upon us.

Not a 'feel-good holiday movie hit', to be sure, but then the holidays are not yet upon us -- so I'm making it an Advent project, remembering that the definition of the Holy Spirit is the Love between the Father and the Son, and therein hangs the tale.



IN WHAT SEEMS LIKE A MINOR FOOTNOTE...

The President has laid out his new, new Afghan strategy in an evening speech, using the cadets of West Point as his wallpaper.

Let's review the chronology:

--March 27, 2009 -- Obama announces his "new comprehensive strategy" for Afghanistan and Pakistan [based, we now know, on the Bush administrations complete review of the situation undertaken in 2008 and kept classified, at the request of the incoming Obama administration]

--May 2009 -- Obama appoints Gen. Stanley McChrystal to replace Gen. David McKiernan as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, less than a year into the latter's term of command.

--August 2009 -- Gen. McChrystal submits a 66-page report to Sec-Def Gates requesting 40,000 more troops, but the request is held back from being officially submitted to the President in order to allow him more time to tread water before dog-paddling in a discernibly forward direction.

--September 2009 -- Gen. McChrystal is finally permitted to make his request for 40,000 additional troops, with the scuttlebutt saying that he will resign if denied the necessary resources.

--December 1 2009 -- Obama lectures the West Point cadets, and the nation, about his plans to send 75% of the troops their general requested, to do all the do-gooder stuff they can accomplish, and to haul them out in 18 months.

Despite his passionless pedantry, Obama is cheered and given an enthusiastic reception by the cadets in the front [who proffered lots of hands for shaking and took lots of pictures -- made me wonder whether the advance men had once again handed out cameras and asked all the Obama supporters to move to the front, as they did in Iraq -- I'm actually okay with that because the 25-30% of the military who vote Democrat would sincerely like to be up there, and nobody's asking the other 70% who voted for McCain to be insincere].

Meanwhile back at the ranch, MSNBC's resident loon Chris Matthews suggests that by going to West Point [in what was a naked exploitation of the cadets for photo-op purposes], Mr. Obama may have been entering "the enemy camp". Retch. Wretch.

I listened to tonight's speech, something I have avoided as often as not over the past year. I detected an attempt on the President's part to seem serious and determined and possibly even leader-like as he stood before uniformed men and women whose outlook on the world he does not understand in even the most miniscule respect. He said words about enemies, and attacks, and national security. But they had a hollow ring. It was an unconvincing performance, principally because it was a performance -- there is nothing about military campaigns, or the "passion of command" , or the scent of victory [rather than "successful conclusions" or "responsible ends"], or the delicate balance of power in a dangerous world that he truly understands in a way that goes down deep in the recesses of the soul, where it needs to reside if you're going to even dare to take your stab at something like a "St. Crispin's Day" speech.

No such speech was given this night. Nor shall be, I suspect, in months to come. It is for the citizenry, then, to make up this lack, and cheer on those who choose to set their feet upon the field of battle for our sake. I think we're up to the job. Here are some helpful hints:



And just to remind the Viggo about that film, the point of which he was so determined to miss:



Now I retire, as a two-day Newfoundland gale continues to hammer the walls and windows, and drive the sump-pump like a galley-slave. The lights keep flickering and threatening to go out. The phone's been in and out of service all day. Just another blustery day on the Rock.

And another late night into early morning. Another day tomorrow for staving off a world of ash.


IRRESISTIBLE UPDATE:

Stephen Green at Vodkapundit drunkblogs the President's speech. Everybody take a shot. Money quotes:

5:08PM “Troop levels remain a fraction” what they were in Iraq. True enough. 7/10ths is a fraction.

5:12PM “As commander-in-chief…” he’s decided to send an additional 30,000 troops for 30 months. That’s not a strategic decision. That’s a new-car warranty.

5:14PM “I’ve seen first hand the terrible wages of war.” It was at a late night photo op here in the US, where nine of ten military families said “no thanks” to the photo op. But still… Bambi is young. And being President is HARD.

5:15PM “We must increase the pressure on al Qaeda.” I’m still not convinced that we can’t do that by firing craploads of Hellfire missiles into Pakistan’s NWFT. But that’s just me.

5:18PM “July of 2011.” Congrats, AQ. Keep your head down until then, and you’ll do fine. Again, these are not strategic decisions the President has made after ten months of review. This is kicking the can further down the road, but with a slightly bigger boot.

5:42PM Bad writing. Lame delivery. Tepid response — from cadets ORDERED to be nice. And a strategic vision equal parts High School Essay Content and low-rent public relations.

I hope you had as much to drink as I did.

No, Stephen, but I get the point. Boo-yah. Ooh-rah.

There's a bit of hagiography (holy legend) about the Second Apostle of Rome, St. Philip Neri, which has the ring of historical truth, and the solid gold seal of metaphysical truth.

Here it is, as recounted by the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in his journal First Things:

The story is told of St. Philip Neri (1515-1595) that he gave a most unusual penance to a novice who was guilty of spreading malicious gossip.

He told him to take a feather pillow to the top of a church tower on a blustery day and there release all the feathers to the wind. Then he was to come down from the tower, collect all the feathers dispersed over the far countryside, and put them back into the pillow. Of course the poor novice couldn't do it, and that was precisely Philip's point about the great evil of tale bearing.

Slander and calumny have a way of spreading to the four winds and, once released, can never be completely recalled. Even when accusations are firmly nailed as false, the reputations of those falsely accused bear a lingering taint. “Oh yes,” it is vaguely said, “wasn't he once accused of . . . "

The words of the Bard that you learned in grade school are entirely to the point:

Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

A heinous crime against reputation is going on at present in the United States, created by a national media for whom their profession has become an ethics-free zone, with the willing complicity of Democrat politicians and their accomplices in the liberal punditocracy, f'rinstance those public menaces the Race-Shakedown Twins, Sharpton and Jackson.

The crime in question is the slanderous attribution of vicious and repugnant utterances to radio gab-king Rush Limbaugh -- utterances that have been branded "racist" (with good reason), and are being blown around by once-reputable media organs like wildfire through an L.A. county canyon in midsummer, without the merest, slightest, most perfunctory effort to discover whether these things were ever actually said.

Limbaugh categorically denies having said them, and challenges the slanderers to produce a single authentic source for any one of them -- a task that not one slanderer has succeeded in doing, and the furious back-peddling has begun already, though with reservations and without apology or retraction.

Rush Limbaugh is one of the most politically astute voices to command the public ear in America. He is also brash, relentless, occasionally vulgar and sexist, culturally under-educated, and genuinely EDGY (where most on the contemporary arts or discourse scene who claim to be so don't even come close to it). Limbaugh is proof that genuine, Swiftian satire is not yet dead -- though his most vicious and/or hypersensitive critics prove equally that it (satire) may be on its last legs.

One of the areas where Limbaugh can be the most edgy is in matters of race, or more specifically, racial politics. One might sometimes be able to characterize his mode of delivering uncomfortable truths as "offensive" or perhaps, more accurately, "abrasive" -- but I challenge anyone to reveal a single abrasive utterance for which an intelligent person, in the cool light of reasoned debate, could not make some coherent and persuasive arguments. Others might disagree, but even Limbaugh's most outrageous claims ARE basically arguable.

Anyone who claims otherwise, and who attributes to him the kind of mindless bigotry embodied in the controversial "quotes" now scurrying around on the public winds.... well, you could say a lot of things about such a person, but one thing is for certain: he or she has NEVER been a listener to the Rush Limbaugh program. IMPOSSIBLE. In fact, Limbaugh's harshest critics, on any subject, prove again and again that they could not possibly have listened to his show for more than a sound bite. (Or, I will allow, it's possible that they did listen longer than a bite, but they have demonstrated themselves too blind and stupid to grasp what they heard.)

There are any number of legitimate criticisms one could make about Limbaugh's program and his manner in delivering it -- I've made a few above, and there are more. I'm always surprised at how his most vitriolic critics seem to miss everything that they might genuinely criticize, and then spew with abandon criticisms that are patently false, even as they themselves engage in all the crass, hateful, superficial, often cruel ad hominem attacks and dishonesty of which they accuse their target. It's a strange thing -- one which, I'm thinkin', betrays nothing so much as FEAR.

Now, I can picture some sort of academically-inclined leftist phiilosopher/ideologue -- of an intensely serious and humorless and apocalyptically tragic mentality -- cultivating the kind of visceral hatred for Rush Limbaugh which has clearly gripped his opponents in media and politics. But I cannot picture this serious partisan lowering himself to engage in the mindless schoolyard savaging, the casually bald-faced lying, the hysterical bogey-manning that issues from Limbaugh's media enemies day in and day out, to their everlasting humiliation; the non-stop indulgence in the very sins for which they would burn Limbaugh at the stake (or some other form of execution, as cheerily recommended by Chris Matthews and others).

What's going on here is just wrong. And the purpose of it is not simply to discredit Limbaugh's opinions, but to destroy his reputation in order to prevent him, as a private citizen, from pursuing a private business transaction to become part-owner of a sports franchise.

Limbaugh has become very rich doing what he does, and that's probably his biggest sin -- he has enough ready cash to fulfill the ultimate sports fantasy, especially for the fan who was never talented or fit enough to play himself. How much, one wonders, does rank jealousy of both his money and his sports-dream lie behind this all-out effort to sabotage Limbaugh's bid for the St. Louis Rams?

On such things apparently the world turns, and, like Hitler at the English Channel, this advance must be halted in its tracks. A proud moment for the fifth estate.

St. Philip Neri, Holy Fool, pray for us.

REAL LIFE ~ THE ONION:
A SEAMLESS GARMENT

PRESIDENT-OF-THE-WORLD OBAMA
WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Mere days ago the kings of the satirical world over at The Onion [read regularly -- die laughing] gave us a short list of the highlights of Barry Obambi's address to the United Nations, among them:

-- Now is a time when we must do something about some problem, perhaps by working with others.

-- If Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons, then it will have to face blank and blank. Oh shoot, I forgot to fill those in.

Little did they know that, based on these very concepts, that very president would shortly be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Or is that Piss Prize?, awarded, as it has been so often in recent years, for little more than consistently pissing on the United States whenever a microphone presents itself -- see: Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat....

Little did we know that the criteria for Nobel status would evolve into something resembling a grading category on a kindergarten report card ["does not run with scissors" or, dare I say it, "promises hope and change"] -- marked on a Dewey-esque sliding scale of "pass/fail" or "satisfactory/unsatisfactory", of course.

On a more serious note, the folks at PowerLine have put together a nice summary of the history of Nobel Prizes, ancient and modern, which explains how these absurdities just keep happening, and how, in fact, the once-prestigious award has a very long record of being fairly ridiculous. Read and learn.

Instapundit has an excellent round-up of responses, including a devastating poignard from Richard Cohen at the WaPo (who will temporarily be forgiven for making effective use of a slur on Sarah Palin), and some wise words from my friend David Warren (via RealClearPolitics). Even the Huffington Post is rattled by the ridiculousness of it. [No link -- life is too short....] Gateway Pundit offers up that it was Nobel for "the gift of gab" -- fair enough.

Is this just another case of "Trophy Kid" Syndrome? The unfortunately-named Starshine Roshell seems to have more sense than her parents [cripes, boomers, the things you did to your kids -- Starshine???], and wrote a needed complaint about what it means when you give a trophy to just anybody, merely for showing up. Little did she know that six months later.....

IRONY ALERT: Oh, those cut-ups at Saturday Night Live! Little did they know that the Big Prize would soon be awarded to the President they had slam-bammed the week before for having been in office nine months and achieved absolootly nuttin' -- nada -- not so much.


POST RACIAL AMERICA

Remember that campaign promise? Well, I'm betting it will come true -- later rather than sooner, and in a backwards fashion. I'm betting that ordinary pale Americans ["white" is ridiculous, and "Caucasian" is exclusionary and inaccurate] are going to get so fed up at being called racists for voicing opinions and ideas that have nothing whatever to do with racial considerations, they are going to start barking back or just ignoring the Amen-corners of the Racial Grievance Industry, and eventually silence them all by diminution and irrelevance. It has begun already.

What's terribly sad, though, is that the road to racial harmony has been carpet-bombed in the few months since the ascendacy of The First Black President and Harbinger of Racial Harmony, due entirely to the redoubled efforts of the racial grievance industry, who can think of no other defense of their stumbling standard-bearer as he fraks up his foray into global politics. Check out this sad survey on the question of whether America is or isn't a basically fair and decent society. That opinion among the country's major minority group has turned on a dime [perhaps one of the few remaining in the national purse, Mr. Geithner?] is itself utterly indecent.


SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

That snippet of Biblical text is often misinterpreted by those who were deprived of learning their King James English: "Suffer the little children come unto to me" means, in today's lingo, "Let the children approach me." The words carry no meaning related to the endurance of physical pain.

Sadly, the two interpretations (correct and not) are increasingly, perversely, fused as we observe in the culture the acclerating normalization of "intergenerational sex". The most recent, most heinous development is the downright weirdsmobile support for convicted child-rapist Roman Polanski, found overwhelmingly among the European (largely the Fwench) "arts community", but leaking frighteningly over into the upper echelons of Hollyweird.

The Polanski affair, however, remains at the fringes of society by virtue (ahem) of having sprouted from the weedy world of entertainment, where no one expects to find normality, whether it is in matters of serial marriage, drug habits, or obscene amounts of money being invested in really really bad taste, from horrible fashions to obese mansions full of kitsch furnishings.

Far more disturbing is the introduction of skewed morality into the politics and education that are supposed to serve the rest of us -- the normal people in nice little homes in ordinary neighbourhoods around the corner from the barber shop. In the United States this skewed crew has come to rest in the nest of Czars -- Presidential appointments to positions of advisory authority and policy influence, appointments requiring no public vetting or representative approval process.

Various czars have been outed as having troublesome records, the most extreme of examples of which have recently crashed -- Van Jones, "Green Jobs Czar", was revealed to be a self-described Communist (bad) and, by any definition, an anti-white racist (way badder). But a President, who is proving himself to be as GREEN as a man can be at his own new JOB, was a long-time admirer and couldn't wait to get Jones on his team.

More disturbing is the presence of Kevin Jennings in a Czar-ship where his capacity to do horrific damage is far greater than Jones's boondoggle. Jennings, by some bizzarro twist of circumstances, ended up being "Safe Schools Czar" -- this despite his being a gay activist whose work and publications all revolve around one aspect or another of being gay in school.

The crowning finial seems to be his intro blurb for a book called Queering Elementary Education [no, I'm not making that up]. Apparently in that Foreword, Jennings totally (and revealingly) steps in it, by expressing some brand of endorsement for a certain Harry Hay, who has an unsavoury connection with the notorious NAMBLA -- the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Learn all you need (and perhaps more than you care) to know about that group from a new book, The Last Undercover [profiled here at Big Hollywood], about the FBI's exposure of its repugnant operations, by intrepid agent Bob Hamer. It's one thing to sacrifice your life for your country -- another to sacrifice the inner sanctity of your own mind, which this poor man probably had to do in order to achieve his aims.

Big Hollywood, obviously a significant source of reflection on the Polanski affair, and thus on larger issues regarding mainstreaming of pedophilia, also offers an interesting piece by a gay conservative who was himself a "Lolito", as he calls it. It won't be agreeable to every reader, but is also food for thought, especially about what happens to the Tolerance Police when fascism becomes fashionable.

John Nolte at Big Hollywood weighs in with a rather chilling piece on Hollywood's pedophilia-mainstreaming agenda. I weigh in on page 4 of his comments, citing a terrific 1997 article by Norman Podhoretz -- Lolita, My Mother-in-Law, the Marquis de Sade, and Larry Flynt -- about how Nabokov's Lolita made pedophilia "thinkable", for which reason Podhoretz, who once made a career of debating against censorship of any kind, came to the reluctant conclusion that Lolita should never be read, and never even have been written. Food for thought, from Commentary -- for purchase, but worth it.

October 9 -- 69th would-be birthday of the composer of Imagine. Imagine all the people living for today. How perfect. How ee-e-e-e-e-w-w-w.

Imagine the vast expensive estate in the British countryside. Imagine the custom-made white grand piano in the gigantic mansion sitting-room with the garden view. "Imagine all the people sharing all the world" (except maybe that giant estate and its sitting room: "Zer vuss rhoom for seven families in ziss house..." -- Dr. Zhivago)

"Imagine no possessions," like the custom-painted Rolls Royce.

Imagine -- the speedo version, but you get the gist...

POP CULTURE QUERY:

I've never seen a Quentin Tarantino movie --
is INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS worth a look?

Frederic Raphael at Commentary has a review. I read the first couple of paragraphs and was unsure where he was going with it -- there were indications that he has seen Taratino's other films, as well as various compliments to the artistry. Then, fearing that there might be spoilers in the review, I scrolled to the bottom line to see if he recommended it:

As Harvey Weinstein would surely say, when a job is also a hit, what can possibly be wrong with it, unless you’re some kind of a pussyfooting elitist loser? Inglourious Basterds has to be great because, if the boffo box-office figures are true, people love it. It’s therefore undemocratic to go calling it the antihuman dirty dream of a pretentious, vacuous clown primed with Hollywood gelt to do the Jews a favor by showing that they too, given the chance, coulda/woulda behaved like mindless monsters. What does it matter, after all this time, if the world gets sold the idea that what Shoshanna and the Basterds did to the Nazis was exactly what the Jews would have done to the Germans if Harvey had been around to greenlight the project?

Going to Inglourious Basterds reminded me of Lina Wertmüller’s Seven Beauties, in which a concentration-camp inmate commits liberating suicide by leaping into a lake of sewage. Tarantino makes an even bigger splash by getting us all to pay to jump into an ocean of his own effluent from which he and Harv alone emerge, with $$ carved in their foreheads.

I'm guessing.....not?

Why am I not surprised? I've always had this sense that Tarantino, kind of like Cronenberg, is a man with many innate talents who has volunteered them to be enslaved to a set of truly base appetites. Won't be rushing out to Blockbuster for his oeuvre any time soon.

THE WIDER WORLD

I've been ducking any survey of the News o' the World in recent days, since it's all so very chilling, and the Reader of the Free World so increasingly, ludicrously incompetent at coping with it.

For a dose of major league reality, Michael Yon contributes to the Washington Times this morning. Return in kind by contributing to him, and he'll keep on delivering the straight story, from deep within the belly of the major beasts.

And then there's the hub of representative democracy, where the Democrat[ic?] Party is fixing to use legislative sleight-of-hand to ram through a massive health care bill as an amendment to an unrelated codicil to their earlier economic disastrathon. It's not that difficult to understand, but the Heritage Foundation does a good job of breaking it down. America, get ready to kiss your ass [your liberty, your economic security, your children's future] G'BYE!

SEEN IN THIS MORNING'S NATIONAL POST,
AND I'M NOT KIDDING

This photo:


And this caption:

Brad Pitt knows the travails of trying to foster socially responsible consumerism. When the actor had to choose a scent for his new line of environmentally friendly body wash for Kiehl's, he ran into a problem: "Not much biodegrades," he said. "There were only three scents to choose from. I chose aloe."

Brad Pitt -- St. Francis of Ass-hatsy.

From the preamble to the North Carolina Democratic Party Platform:

We take pride in our Democratic heritage as a party of spiritual and patriotic values; a party of inclusiveness; a party of diversity; a party of compassion; a party of educational and economic opportunities; a party of social justice; and a party of responsible leadership."

This item is NOT official
campaign gear



from state or national Democratic Party affiliates-- but sometimes the genealogy of inspiration is traceable.


Stay classy, libs.

[hat-tip: Kathy Shaidle, via Malkin, via somebody else I can't remember....]

WHO WON?














ABC's morning anchorperson took on Governor Sarah for her first Most Excellent TV Interview Adventure.




She had her weak moments. But at the end of the day, the imperious, supercilious, self-important Professor Gibson just made himself look...small.



H-m-m-m-m

It has come to me recently that I have one very, very big fear about the 2008 U.S. election:

I fear that at some point, Sarah Palin's mountain man husband, Todd

is just gonna HAVE to CLOCK somebody!!!

And I would SO want to be there when it happens! Please, somebody, have the camera rolling!

But I sure hope it doesn't turn out to be former-conservative-turned-alien-life-form Andrew Sullivan, cuz Andrew's, er, "husband" is a REALLY big dude too,


and he might decide that, like Mr. Palin, he has to step in and..., um,... defend his woman.... as 'twere.

Among Sullivan's early reactions to the Palin pick [even before he became an irresponsible smear-monger in the National Enquirer mode]:

Squaring The Christianist Circle

29 Aug 2008 11:35 am

Now I understand: she's a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome child. And she's not from the South.

And later, after flogging every scandal he could scrape off the bottom of his shoe [about Bristol being Trig's mother, about an affair with a business partner, you name it, he disseminated it]:

She is a long-time member of the Assemblies Of God. That's all you need to know.

Sully, we hardly know ye..... Well, yeah -- we do now.


Hurricane Ike -- bearing down on my little niece's house! STOP THAT!

I TAKE IT ALL BACK

Here I was, feeling like I had to soften the blow of a mouthy Canadian newsbabe who fired off a bazooka-sized bitch-slap on Sarah Palin, via the CBC webpage [scroll down].

Well, why should I be surprised that once again America has built something bigger and better. Or in this case, badder and bitchier. Check out the Malign-a Monologue by some mistress of the frickatives named Cintra Wilson at Salon.com. I won't even quote any of it here. Reading it once was too exhausting.

Re: the weird tilt toward Puritanism exhibited by the most lefty of the left when they take on a person of sincere traditional moral convictions. Strange how Mrs. Palin brings out the over-sexed smut-mouthed prose stylings in these feminist columnists, who sex-up every angle of every argument, but do so with this bizarre, dripping disgust -- you can almost see the lace hanky being brought to the turned up nose and the cry for smelling salts, like a spectator at the Ascot races who just heard Eliza Doolittle holler, "Come on Dover, move your bloomin' arse!"


Or, more to the point, they are as seized by seething shock as the nice little church ladies who sat at their dinner table and endured Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen's on-screen alter ego) gracing their gathering with a bag of feces and a two-bit hooker.

Spare us the gasps and squeemish dry heaves, ladies. Go ahead and strike something, if it makes you feel better, but not this particular pose.

MATTHEW MODINE APPLAUDS

... which is a good thing, because I might fall asleep: this is WAY less exciting than either Bill or Hillary. Mr. O has promised to tap more natural gas -- he's got a head-start by having tapped Joe Biden for the two-spot.

Did I tell you he said we'd have safe toys?

Things are ratcheting up a bit now, since he's rolling out the promi$e$. All very, as 'twere, 'conventional'. He just acknowledged that it will all cost money, but he's going to pay for it by carving off the bureaucracy. Good luck with that.

He's ridin' the absent fathers now -- that's good.

Just challenged McCain to a debate about the "temperament and judgement to be Commander-in-Chief" -- good luck with that, too. Said McCain "won't even follow Bin Laden to the cave he lives in." Oh, Johnny Mac is going to be smokin' at that one! On this subject, Mr. O falls off his boilerplate and right into the total B.S. quagmire -- what garbage, distortion, drivel.

"I've got news for you, John McCain: we ALL put our country first." By not voting to fund the troops?

"Change doesn't come from Washington -- it comes to Washington." Or it does both, on the train, every day from Washington to Delaware. He keeps saying stuff that reflects worse on Biden than on McCain.

We have arrived at the Martin Luther King moment. And we're marching into the future, with Scripture, and stuff.

As the Church Lady might put it: "Well. Isn't that special." Yes and no.

Camera finds Matthew Modine again. Guess it's hard to find all the celebrities in a crowd of 85K. Whoa -- fireworks. Okeefine.

Oddly over-earnest music seems to have poured cold water on the crowd's excitement. Wrap-up voices (is that Nancy Pelosi I hear?) trying to re-kindle it-- 'Born in the USA' may help.


On the whole, a bit flat, and the audience under-reacted appropriately. It was a fun 'happening'-- will he respect us in the morning?

CONVENTION,
DAY THREE

IT'S A DONE DEAL

I wish I could celebrate quite as much as Juan Williams, but he's a respectable man so we'll take him at his word about the electrifying significance of Obama's nomination for the Presidency.

I really do wish it -- I wish Obama was "the guy" whose accomplishments and biography showed him to be worthy of both the political and personal plaudits now being lavished upon him. But sorry -- he's not. This celebration is a dreary pageant which is about one thing only, and that is race. His nomination is fundamentally unserious, and if he should win the election, the consequences of an unserious administration will be devastating, far beyond the borders of one nation. It's a sad thing.

I wish it were otherwise. What I really wish is that this moment -- certainly a milestone in history, unfortunately diminished by a lightweight candidate -- were given its due context, that of a long and rich story of progress in America for the descendants of slaves (which Obama, of course, is not). There is far too much rhetoric, from the candidate himself and even moreso from his wife and his circle of unsavoury associates, painting the rise of Barack Obama to the apex of American power as if it has come like an unprecedented shot from out the deep, mirey chasm of centuries of entrenched racial discrimination and oppression.

Poppycock. And such an insult to his forebears, who DID ascend to places of honour only by punching their way through nearly insurmountable barriers. It's been more than a century since black pioneers, close upon the heels of slavery, fought their way into the ranks of teachers, doctors, the military, and the Catholic clergy, just to name a few. Later came politics (local and national), law enforcement, and the military officer class, among other things.

Barack Obama stands on the shoulders, at the very least, of Thurgood Marshall -- and what ingratitude it betrays that neither Obama nor his liberal disciples can bring themselves to acknowledge the continuing historic significance of Marshall's successor on the court, Clarence Thomas, plus two black Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condi Rice, one of whom was also Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All four of these exceptional people have life stories of genuine struggle and perseverance against tremendous odds, beside which the Obama biography of prep school and political opportunism pales by comparison.

Yes, we have the first (real) black nominee for President -- an office not so many breaths above those that have been held by these minority achievers who preceded him. It has been a slow but gradual -- not sudden, overnight -- ascent to the mountaintop.


Convention wrap-up:
Some woman nominated Hillary "in the name of all women" -- excuse me? As the anti-war thumpers would say, "NOT IN MY NAME!!!"

Could someone tell me why THIS scary woman (left) DNC Secretary Alice Travis Germond, wearing her Washington, D.C. helmet-head of hair, is somehow Ms. Cool for the Democrats,

















but Katherine Harris (right), Florida Secretary of State in 2000, was vilified, ridiculed, and trashed by the party of feminism for having bad hair, make-up, and the gall to rule against Gore.

Just askin'.


The first "spiritually" (or whatever) black President, Bill Clinton, has just delivered his usual mysteriously captivating oratory and was a good soldier, giving a vacuous and platitudinous but highly charged endorsement of Obama, without sacrificing the opportunity to ooze his charm from every pore and remind everyone how terrific he is. He donated one unwitting gift to the Republicans by reminding us that even he was considered too young and inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief in 1992. He was. [read it here]

The Biden video, and even his handsome son, have just produced some interesting fictions: Obama tells us that he spoke out against some vague aspect of the Iraq war, and Biden himself rails about an unnecessary war and an abuse of power (so why'd you vote for it, Joe?), and then Barack assures us that Joe's best quality is his honesty (except when he's borrowing not only the words but the life of British pol Neil Kinnock).

Certain aspects of Biden's biography are indeed compelling and tragic -- but the damage he has done, especially his repugnant conduct of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has had tragic consequences for way more than one family. Beau Biden (a National Guard captain heading for Iraq in October -- good on him!) has asked something of me that no other political campaigner ever has: would I please "be there" for Barack and his dad. The Therapeutic Culture triumphs! E-e-e-e-e-w-w-w-w.

Biden is going all Evangelical with an antiphon/refrain thingy ("that's not change, that's more of the same"). Bo-ring. It's murky and peripatetic. Now Biden just got snotty about the "claim" that things are better in Iraq and that's why we don't hear about it. Then he recites a litany of how McCain was wrong on Iraq and Obama was right. He doesn't think his ""good friend" John McCain had enough parts of his body twisted up like a pretzel, he has to do the same to his record and his character? Feeling that bayonet again, John? In the back? BIZARRE!!!!!!!!!! I think Joe may live to eat those silly words. [Mirengoff at Powerline puts it all together.]

Finally he goes right up over the top with "Remember when the world used to trust us? With Barack Obama they'll trust us again." YEE-HAAAAAAA!!! Boil that boilerplate! We've all been knocked down, but we'll get up again. Cue CHUMBAWAMBA:




At last -- The Messiah has arrived in the building: Re-cap of major speeches (successful or oherwise.) Explaining why he will be doing the Superbowl Halftime thing tomorrow. Apparently it all started with a "simple idea." Hm-m-m-m-m.

What are they calling the Greek temple stage now?

-- Temple of Obamacles
-- The O-cropolis
-- My Big Fat Greek Acceptance Speech
-- Barackolis

(hat-tip: National Review/the Campaign Spot)

May I add?:

-- Circus Taximus
-- Par-Olympus
-- Pant-theon (pant, pant, pant)
-- Come-and-seum
-- Animal House II

Biden seems to have a large, cute family, especially his mom.

I wonder what colour the sky is in his world.

CONVENTION, DAY TWO


THERE'S LIFE IN THE OLD GIRL [Holy Mother Church] YET!

FAUX CATHOLIC, SPEAKRESS PELOSI, GETS THE EPISCOPAL SMACKDOWN FOR BUTCHERING CHURCH TEACHING ON ABORTION

Nancy Pelosi is "an ardent, practicing Catholic" -- except when she's not. I believe it's a principle of physics that two objects cannot occupy the same space, so let's be clear that an ardent Catholic and an advocate of abortion license cannot occupy the same human body. One or the other of those entities must be exorcised. There's nothing the least bit remarkable about Pelosi's spiritual bankruptcy; self-induced laetae sententiae excommunicate Catholics are a dime a dozen, especially among the political class. [Democratic Veepster Joe Biden is just such another.]

What must be called remarkable, though, is the committed and confident abject ignorance on display as Pelosi assured NBC interviewer-emeritus Tom Brokaw that, in 2000 years, the Church had never quite been able to make a definitive pronouncement about when an embryonic human acquires the status of a being with rights. Even Senator [OOPS!] Saint Augustine put it at 3 months' gestation -- so we don't know, right? So, like, whatever! -- we err on the side of caution elimination.

WHOOOOSH-H-H-H! [sound of men in moiré satin and lace swooping down like a stooping falcon] This is a job for SUPER-BISHOP!!!

First out of the chute, Archbishop Chaput (and his auxiliary, Bishop Conley), right handy there in Denver, who issued a well-crafted letter and catechetical slap to Madame Speaker, less for her benefit than for those whose perception of Catholic teaching may have been blindsided by Pelosi's brain-droppings. Full text is here with The Rest Of The Story, as well as the words of the FOUR other bishops who followed his lead: Rigali and Egan (Cardinals), Lori, and Wuerl. KABOOM!!

It's been a tough week for San Fran Gran Nan. First she makes an first-class ass of herself (yet again) by barking about how we need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels by using more natural gas. (Uh, yeah. Ya see, Nan, yer natural gas is way down there where da oil is -- it works kinda like this.) Then she gets her moment in the sun at the convention (blink, blink, blink in the sun) only to burble and blabble in the late afternoon while absolutely nobody was listening. Which is just as well, since she gave so much evidence of how firmly planted she is in her little parallel universe. Then she runs afoul of a surprisingly fleet-footed Catholic hierarchy ready to read her the riot act. It's enough to make anybody's facial stitches pop.


HALLOWEEN IS TWO MONTHS AWAY,
BUT THE GREAT PUMPKIN HAS LANDED:

HILLARY'S IN AN ORANGE PANTSUIT,
AND SHE'S LIT UP INSIDE

The orange is actually a well-calculated choice, against the electric blue background -- classic colour theory. She's stealing the show pretty good, with her slightly re-worked stump speech (starting with her 35 years of experience-- as opposed to, oh, you know....) Bio video and speech are almost entirely the story of her campaign, very little else about her life before that. Old Hillary campaign signs were very little in evidence. Then she started speaking, and a whole new genre of signs -- a more personal look, consisting of her signature -- and there were hundreds of them, waving to the rhythm thunderous cheers.

Michelle looked pretty sour through the speech, until about half an hour in, when Hillary finally got around to mentioning who's really running for President. Odd-- Michelle at least got an acknowledgement that she'd be great for her perspective job. Barack got nothing that enthusiastic. Everybody's jazzed -- about Hillary, the historic woman -- who did a pretty good job of delivering tired campaign boiler-plate. She's learned not to shriek. That's a good thing. Obambi probably should have picked her, and knows it better now than he did at lunch today. I'm glad he didn't.

Hillary came to the hall this evening as a "proud mother, Democrat, Senator, American, and Barackista." Um.... let's see now. Proud........wife? Nah. Barack ain't the only one who got nudged to the margins. On a general note -- why do Democrats always have to lie so much? Just askin'.




Hey, Barack. I know you think you shouldn't take your eyes off her. But looks who's coming up behind.