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.

DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION --
DAY ONE

MICHELLE'S EXTREME MAKEOVER
PRONOUNCED "COMPLETE"

Banal and corny, soft and sweet, standard laundry-list, anger more-or-less in check, more about the promise of the future than the stale tale of our common victimization (or the perpetual whine about their damn college loans)....... who was that woman anyway??!!!

A little kiss-up to Hillary, a good scrub-a-dub for Barack, a little fog-machine on her own previous declarations.

Oh, and note to file, Mrs. O: I really don't want to hear you talking like you can relate to the military families with the empty chair at the table. Spare me -- I'm not buyin'.

Anyhoo -- she did her job. Moving on........


UNDENIABLE: TED KENNEDY LOOKED AMAZING
FOR A MAN FACING DEATH.

Maybe that's just the natural effect of being in a room where he could suck up the narcotic of public adulation with which he has benumbed the nerve-ends of basic humanity all his life. His words were the usual windbaggery; the video made unfortunate reference to his way of sailing over waters in which the innocent have drowned. He was treated with a fawning deference which mocked the tremendous damage his career of corrosive demagoguery and way-out leftism have inflicted upon the body politic (not least upon the bodies of the defenseless unborn).

Unfortunately he hasn't figured out why he's still thumping for the same government health care he has promised for the past 40 years or so: because year in, year out, so many many people know it just won't work.

I have written my anticipatory obituary for him, which will be food for another day. Sufficient unto the day is to remark that he did well and looked well in coming to the gathering of his tribe.


NOT WANTED ON VOYAGE:
THAT LUMPY OLD BAG

Speakress of the House San Fran Gran Nan Pelosi (whom I watched for a minute or so till I could watch no more, averting mine eyes from the train wreck) was particularly wooden and vacuous. E-e-e-e-w-w-w-w.


OTHER REVOLTING BAGGAGE: JIMMUH.

The Worst President of the Twentieth Century, if not All of History showed his face. I didn't stick around. Rosalyn was wearing a nice pant-suit.


Counting down the days.

GERMANS LOVE OBAMA -- CAN'T VOTE

IRAQIS HATE BIDEN -- CAN'T VOTE

All for the best, I guess, but.......

I always had the feeling that Gibberin' Joe Biden's plan for a tripartite division of Iraq along sectarian lines had been hatched without the least interest in what the Iraqis wanted for themselves -- even if it might possibly work, it was still something an American had no business advocating within the American Congress.

Now we know that the Iraqis were keeping an eye on Joe too, and were in complete agreement with me. (I always had the feeling a lot of them were pretty smart....)

Reuters (of all people!) reports the story. Money Quote Music to mine ears:

Senator Joe Biden may be one of the only U.S. politicians that can get Iraq's feuding Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians to agree. But not in a good way.

"This choice of Biden is disappointing, because he is the creator of the idea of dividing Iraq," Salih al-Mutlaq, head of National Dialogue, one of the main Sunni Arab blocs in parliament, told Reuters. "We rejected his proposal when he announced it, and we still reject it. Dividing the communities and land in such a way would only lead to new fighting between people over resources and borders. Iraq cannot survive unless it is unified, and dividing it would keep the problems alive for a long time."

Tigerhawk weighs in with his take:

Anyway, it is a reflection of the diminishing political significance of the Iraq war that Barack Obama, who secured the Democratic nomination in part by making much of his opposition to the war and his plan to withdraw our troops on a fast schedule, is now able to pick as his running mate a senator who voted for the invasion in 2002 and whose favored "solution" would have required more rather than less American involvement in Iraqi domestic politics.

Duh.

"We rejected his proposal when he announced it..." Funny, I don't recall hearing that on Anderson Cooper 180 or reading it from the Paper of Record. Funny.

Maybe next time Joe will remember to ask them first.

Woe to those who would hide their plans too deep for the LORD! Who work in the dark, saying, "Who sees us, or who knows us?"
[Isaiah 29:15]

It's midnight in the District of Columbia, and...

IT'S BIDEN!!!!


Yes, the Obamaniacs have been hard at work in the dark of night, and Dems, you got yourself a Veepsteak.

Oh, and if you're one of the loyal acolytes who signed up to be the "First to Know" via text or email from Barack Obama (still on offer at the Obama website), you are so S.O.L., my friends -- your message should arrive some time tomorrow morning, but the Really Important People (the press) were the Real First To Know, and they beat you by hours. Perhaps you didn't read the fine print at the bottom of the page, that says you have to cough up money or perform some other act of service for the campaign in order to get what you thought was offered to you freely. (See convention tickets, etc.)

Delaware Senator Joe Biden --
just five years younger than John McCain, elected to the Senate when Barry Obama was 10 years old -- has been chosen to be the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate. Once infamous for having plagiarized a speech (not to mention plagiarizing his forehead hair from some other part of his body), Biden is now much more famous for his own words -- by the score. His chronic oral diarrhea has made an ass of him in more forums than one can count, most memorably in the confirmation hearings of Republican-nominated Supreme Court Justices.

Political humorist Andy Borowitz predicted a few days ago that, anticipating the nod, Biden had already "prepared a 50,000 word acceptance speech" to begin on Wednesday and close on Thursday.

Jonah Goldberg at NationalReviewOnline calls the choice "an outright terrible decision," and reminds us that "Biden is such a gasbag he makes the Hindenburg look like a sack of rocks." Not content to gift us with this new bon mot, Goldberg resurrects his September '05 assessment of the man (whom he actually kind of likes):

He says interesting things, from time to time. I think he makes a fair point here and there...What's fascinating — and what might be distracting some folks from seeing his underlying-yet-occassional smarts — is that he lets his ego and vanity get in the way. The man loves his voice so much, you'd expect him to be following it around in a grey Buick, in defiance of restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization's usual imperatives to stop talking.

Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown V. Board of Ed which most people don't understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I'm going to get right to it and besides these aren't the droids you're looking for...

[hat-tip, Obiwan Kenobi -- emphases: mine]

But while we're all chuckling at the prospect of two hot air balloons trying to occupy the same platform, it's worth remembering that two years ago Biden proposed a "solution" to the strife in Iraq which was manifestly disastrous, and he's still being treated like it was a serious proposal -- in fact, even in the past half-hour there have already been suggestions that the hard-won resolutions arrived at this year in Iraq actually bear some resemblance to the three-way religio/ethnic ghetto-izing Biden had recommended. Dennis Byrne of the Chicago Tribune summed it up pretty well at the time-- money quote:

Just as the Iraqis were finally putting together a unity government, along comes Sen. Joseph Biden with a "detailed plan" to unravel it.

Brilliant.

As brilliant as Abraham Lincoln preparing a detailed plan to end the Civil War upon the fall of Vicksburg.

Just like Sara Lee, it seems that nobody doesn't like Joe Biden. But he is nevertheless dangerously dumb where smartness is required for survival. Many a Republican/conservative considers this choice (and the blabbering dumbness) of Biden a gift in this election cycle, and happily say "Bring it on." If the survival of the species were not dependent on these things, this could be nothing but fun. The Democratic ticket could be the gaffe that keeps on gaffing.

Anyway, Biden should enjoy himself as he runs for office on the promise of "CHANGE" (having spent 36 years in Washington), hand-in-glove with that fella he once admired for being "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy -- I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Kinda gets ya'-- rightcheer.

On the other hand, Jim Geraghty at NRO has a revealing round-up of some of Biden's less-than-complimentary assessments of his new running mate, now on record. F'rinstance, in December of '07, Joe was heard to opine: “When this campaign is over, political slogans like ‘experience’ and ‘change’ will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act.” [hat-tip YidWithLid]

Well, this is as close as Ol' Joe is ever gonna get to the West Wing office. This team is not gonna get the gold-- and not because their opponents are underage!!!!

OBAMA WANTS TO TRAVEL
ON A FINE CHINESE TRAIN

JUSTIN SAYS "YOU CAN HAVE IT"

[I fixed about a dozen typos -- Justin had had a hard day]

The train was unbelievable, I don't know where to start.

We climbed onto the carriage with our rucksacks to a sight of hoards of Chinese sitting, standing, hanging and perching everywhere imaginable. Everybody stopped talking as the 2 aliens (thankfull pretty wasted by this point) made their way down the carriage to their seat, pushing, climbing, even standing on the locals to sqeeze through.

Once seated a crowd gathered around us just staring with the occasional comment in Chinese. After about an hour of this we got talking to a local boy and spent the next few hours drinking more and helping him speak English, by the end he was fully fluent in almost 6 swear words and our job was done.

Did I mention that every other minute someone is coughing up phlegm which either goes straight onto the floor with the discarded newspapers/ciggarette ash/cashew nuts/locals who couldn't afford a seat, or gets launched out the window with an amazing noise that I've grown to love.

Night time comes so it's time to sleep...yeah right. Even with a travel pillow and a an eye mask it's impossible. Either the food trolley is rammed down the aisle into your leg every 30 minutes, or a local is leaning on top of you snoring (thankfuly they don't dribble), or someone with a megaphone (yes really, at 3am this morning) is standing in the carriage selling socks or newspapers or horns are blowing and at 2am the fella behind me went through his entire polyphonic ringtone collection...twice.

Glad to be off the train but it was certainly an experience. We are shattered.

[Yeah, I know, it was 2005. But my reliable source told the same story just a year ago.]


THINK THE OBAMESSIAH WOULD ENJOY THESE ARRANGEMENTS? :

I signed up to get Barack Obama's Veep announcement, and all I got was this lousy donation solicitation notice.

Colour me shocked.

I'M AS FAMOUS AS AN UNNAMED PERSON CAN BE --

POWERLINE STANDS CORRECTED

The Powerline blog ran this hilarious concocted video, but misattributed the source to the Pythons' Life of Brian. I steered them toward Franco Zefferelli, and my quips made their front page [fer a minute].





BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE --
BUT CLOTHES DON'T MAKE THE MAN

Apparently the U.S. Army can no longer repress its uniform envy, and will be opting to make their Dress Blues the standard uniform, reflecting the extremes of their Marine-Corps-wannabe status.


Good luck with that, guys.



"Flight attendants, final cross-check...."

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE REAL WORLD....

Hear that munching sound? The world's termites and maggots are busily nibbling away at the edges of mankind's well-being -- pretty much as we left things when we headed off for more pleasant horizons:





Yeah, I know everybody on the web is using it, but it's kind of irresistable:


Bring the good old bugle, boys,
we'll sing another song
Sing it with a spirit that
will start the world along
Sing it as we used to sing it, 50,000 strong
While we were marching through Georgia.

Chorus
Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!
So we sang the chorus from [Ossetia] to the sea
While we were marching through Georgia.

I do recall feeling my gag reflex way back when George Bush looked into Vlad the Impaler Putin's eyes and saw a good soul, or whatever the heck it was. What misgivings I had about John McCain have receded proportionally upon hearing about his other [besides the Surge] moment of prescience:

While it's all looking very bleak, at least we can see a glimmer of hope in the powerful words of Georgian President Saakashvili. Perennial genial lightweight Glenn Beck seems to have developed a rapport with the Saak-man, and let him rip for an hour on a recent show. (a Youtube 3-parter)





MEGA-CHURCHER WARREN HOSTS A
PORPOISE-DRIVEN DEBATE

Normally I have nothing but suspicion toward mega-church enterprises, but California's Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren seems benign enough, and I'm told that his mega-selling book A Purpose-Driven Life is not without substance.

So Warren invited the two presumptive presidential nominees to separate but equal public interviews on matters of faith and principle. Each was to have the opportunity to answer the same questions without knowledge of how the other responded.

I didn't watch it. Frankly, I'm not all that interested in the faith-related musings of either candidate -- McCain seems a nice enough guy with a nominal attachment to some Protestant community, but I would characterize his mode of expression as pretty much the stuff of the American secular religion: God not particularly distinguished from Country. Obama's religious associations, no matter how much he tries to distance himself from them, are throughly repugnant, and I could never consider anything he has to say on matters theological or spiritual to be anything but tainted and twisted at the root.

I needn't have worried, since at his most reflective he declared one of the defining public policy issues of the modern age to be both theologically and scientifically "above his pay grade." Unfortunately the cool dude from Illinois didn't seem to grasp that big public policy issues have a way of insisting that we craft some kind of legal "specificity" to best keep peace and order in society, and THAT, Mr. Obama, is within the presidential and legislative pay grades -- the buck stops in the District of Columbia.

Obama's attempt at sudden (and thoroughly implausible) humility in the face of a great moral question has only succeeded in keeping alive a hot-button political issue which the feminist left thought it had successfully aborted (as 'twere), thereby resuscitating the appalling Obama record on the fate of infants accidentally born alive after an attempted abortion. For the sake of their mothers' theoretical womb-autonomy, Mr. Obama has supported the legalized manslaughter of the stubbornly alive newborn. And he has stood virtually alone, even among liberal Democrats, on this issue -- a rather distasteful variation on his status as "The One."

So if Nat Hentoff's characterization of Obama as "the Infanticide Candidate" a few months back hasn't quite stuck in the public mind, the pot has now been duly stirred by the Obamessiah's own pitifully clumsy evasiveness at the Saddleback forum. Obama's voting record on Born Alive Infant Protection and Partial Birth Abortion is the scummy bathwater he was hoping would get thrown out with the baby, but he seems to have accomplished yet another pratfall while treading in his own oil-slick.

God love him -- the gift that keeps on giving! Thanks to Mr. Obama's verbal contortionism, Rich Lowry at National Review is writing this, Paul Kengor at Political Mavens is writing this, and Kyle-Ann Shiver at American Thinker is writing this. Hey, Barry, thanks for the memory.

Obama's Saddleback performance was so poor that his campaign is now circulating far-fetched stories of McCain having access to both the questions and his rival's answers ahead of time -- because, as NBC's Andrea Mitchell observed, "he seemed so well prepared."

He was, Andrea.

FOUR YEARS AT THE NAVAL ACADEMY,
TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN THE MILITARY,
FIVE+ YEARS IN THE HANOI HILTON,
AND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE U.S. SENATE
WILL DO THAT FOR YOU.

Not to mention having a moderately well-developed set of principles -- translation: you've figured out what the important stuff is, and have pretty much decided what you think about it.

Helps a lot in answering questions, Andrea. Helps you sound prepared.

NBC: still Koo-Koo for Cocoa Puff. (There, I said it.)


WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST!

That explains the close competition between American and Chinese female gymnasts, at what has turned out to be a pretty good Olympics hosted by Merry Maoists. Heck, the smog has cleared so much you can see across the street!

Still a bit foggy in record-keeping for the "Birthday Girls" however. The gymnastic coaches tell us that there are definite advantages to pulling off the required stunts when you've got a team of "pixies" as one called them. Last November's Xinhua Newspaper listed [now gold-medal winner] He Kexin as a promising "little girl" of 13 years old. By this summer her birthdate had jumped into the Way-
Back Machine and landed at January 1st (phew!) 1992.

Since the women[?]'s individual uneven bars gold medal was a numerical tie that had to be broken [by restoring dropped lowest scores and averaging to the thousandth of a point], it was of course pretty galling for grown woman almost-19-year-old American Nastia Liuken,to lose to overnight 16-year-old He Kexin. Hey, folks, that's why we call 'em Chi-Coms!

I'm with Jon Stewart on this one (colourful language alert!).




[Maybe if we keep kneeling down nobody will notice how teeny we are.]



Trying to look older than we really are: isn't that doing a reverse triple Pelosi in the tuck position?

AT LONG LAST

Olympic-sized kudos to Canada's Ian Millar, 61-year-old king of the mounted.


He's won so many compe- titions and been in so many Olympics (eight) I had not realized that he had no Olympic medal to show for it. The Canadian team won their silver, the first national medal in 40 years.

Sad that Millar could not share this long-awaited prize with his wife and pardner, Lynn, who died last year, after working by his side at the equestrian arts for more than three decades. The long and lanky horseman, with his seemingly perpetually sunny face, dedicated his medal to the angel he knew was riding with him.

Millar's long-time mount, the aptly-named Big Ben, didn't live to share the moment either. Strange that the magnificently huge horse never brought Millar Olympic glory -- though now that he's dead and isn't here to defend himself, we are given to understand that he could be a bit distracted by all the adulation and tended toward overconfidence!... Well, we can forgive him a little vanity.

Ben's friend In Style has carried Millar to glory at last -- extra measure of oats, please.

FRACK!!!!!

WE'RE BACK!

Sunday, 6 a.m. here:

Sunday, 6 p.m. (7:30 in Newfoundland) here:

ACK.

[P.S. If it's not frackin' obvious, number 1 son has now got us hooked on Battlestar Gallactica]

SEPARATED AT BIRTH:

Sen. Harry Reid *** Froggy from Our Gang
















[hat-tip: Monday afternoon caller to The Dennis Miller Show ]

IT'S BEEN A QUIET WEEK AT LAKE WOBEGON.....

But here in remotest Newfoundland, it's been a Newfie-palooza.

It was all work and no play for several weeks while house and garden underwent further transformations, much of it geared toward looking all pretty for the Unveiling of the Plaque, following our recent heritage restoration award.

Then, at the appointed moment, scores of the curious descended upon the old house on the cove, and sniffed out every nook and cranny to their satisfaction. Local political bigwigs made their little speeches, the little girl with the big voice sang Oh Canada, and Ode to Newfoundland, the veil was dropped, and the good times rolled.

Say, what's up at the big house?



Well, in the living room there was....



And in the dining room there was....



And in the kitchen there was....



Ya don't git one 'o these every day, eh b'y? It's a beautiful day in the neighbourhood.



MEANWHILE, BACK ON PLANET EARTH....

Satire was in fine fettle, both over the pond, from Gerard Baker at the Times of London:




And over at Scrappleface, where we'd expect nothing less: "McCain backs Timeline to get Obama Out of Iraq."


Even Letterman got into the act:




Yeah, I know I'm days behind the news curve -- we're a little slow out here at Lake Wobegon, b'gosh. Another ten days, and they'll be dragging me onto the plane back to civilization. Pass the Screech.

DEVIL DIALOGUE

This morning's exchange between Dennis Miller and "Salman," Miller's Ed McMahon, regarding the prospect of huge crowds greeting Barrockstar Obama in Germany :

Dennis: So a million people show up. Who cares what Germany thinks? I don't care if TWO million people are there....

Salman: I know how many WON'T be there....

Dennis: How many?

Salman: Six million.

RIM SHOT!!!!!!

AL GORE -- TREE KILLER


Americans for Prosperity does a little Michael Moore number on a recent Algoriffic Environmentalcase Event. [hat-tip National Review Online]




Heh.



Also at NRO:

"If God didn't want us to eat cows, he wouldn't have made them out of steak."

The Book of Numbers,
ch. 19, v. 1-2.

Hmmmmmm.

א וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה וְאֶל-אַהֲרֹן לֵאמֹר.	1 And the LORD spoke unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying:
ב זֹאת חֻקַּת הַתּוֹרָה, אֲשֶׁר-צִוָּה יְהוָה לֵאמֹר: דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְיִקְחוּ אֵלֶיךָ פָרָה אֲדֻמָּה תְּמִימָה אֲשֶׁר אֵין-בָּהּ מוּם, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-עָלָה עָלֶיהָ, עֹל.	2 This is the statute of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying: Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer, faultless, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke.

PEOPLE HAVIN' FUN WITH
OBAMESSIAH CAMPAIGN GEAR

[found at LUNDESIGNS, h/t Powerline]


OBAMA ROAD crew:


Alternative Campaing Logos:











Alternative posters:
















I actually saw this one in Houston -- several times:

TONY SNOW,
1955-2008

R.I.P.

Between the painting, wallpapering, plant-potting, and such here in outer Newfoundland, I've hardly had time to even absorb, much less mark and opine upon, the passing of Tony Snow. We all knew it was coming, but tried to play ostrich about it anyway.

There's been lots of retrospective on the 'net -- one of the benefits of having it, so as to preserve and reproduce words and voices out of the past -- again, too much to absorb any time soon. But while stumbling around in search of who might be saying it best, I was moved by the all-too-human response of Mark Davis at RealClearPolitics:

Like Tim Russert before him, Tony Snow brought an infectious passion and likability to his craft... His 17 months at the White House press room podium made predecessor Scott McClellan look like the useless shlub history now reveals him to be.

When Tony Snow took over that post in Spring 2006, one of President Bush's key problems was the passionless ineptitude that poisoned the delivery of his message. Snow fixed that in one day, establishing a style of addressing the press with conviction and humor. There had been no one like him before, and I don't see anyone equaling him again.

[He] never let go of his passion for life, even as cancer slowly robbed him. Now we are the ones who have been robbed. Tony Snow should have been able to see his kids grow older as he grew old with his bride, and we should have been able to enjoy his sunny demeanor during political clashes lasting well into the middle of this century. It is his gifts, the kind he shared with Tim Russert, that are sorely needed, not just in government and on TV, but in our entire national discourse.

I am sad and angry and I miss him. My faith tells me I'm not supposed to grumble so much when God calls people home. Well, I'm sorry. While I know there's some great talent gathering in heaven, I simply was not done with them down here.

Having gotten that off one's chest, the more gracious reflection was the President's:

I know it's hard to make sense of today. It is impossible to fully comprehend why such a good and vital man was taken from us so soon. But these are the great mysteries of life -- and Tony knew as well as anyone that they're not ours to unveil.

The day Tony was born was also the day that many of his fellow Catholics pay tribute to Saint Justin. Justin was also a gifted thinker and writer, and a powerful witness for the Christian faith. Because of his beliefs, he suffered many times of trial, and in the year 165 A.D. he was arrested. Before he received a sentence of death, he was asked: "If you are killed, do you suppose you will go to heaven?" Justin replied: "I do not suppose it, but I know and am fully persuaded of it."

Tony Snow knew that, as well. That brought him great peace. When talking about the struggle he waged so admirably, he said that no matter how bad times may sometimes seem, "God doesn't promise tomorrow, he does promise eternity."

And so today we send this man of faith and character and joy on his final journey. Tony Snow has left the City of Washington for the City of God. May he find eternal rest in the arms of his Savior. And may the Author of all creation watch over his family and all those who loved him, admired him, and will always cherish his memory.

Requiescat in pacem.

MICHAEL RAMIREZ of Investor's Business Daily remains the pre-eminent editorial cartoonist of the day.

(hat-tip Dennis Miller Zone)


HEH. Oh yeah.

July 15 DISPATCH from MICHAEL YON

It's been my privilege to have supported former Green Beret and self-embedded reporter MICHAEL YON for the past three years, as he has consistently produced the most impassioned, vivid, and informed reporting from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Like all his enrolled supporters, I've received regular email notice of his latest dispatches, with links to his website for the full texts, always signed "Very respectfully," for he has always respected the relationship built with his readers, and fulfilled his end of the bargain by offering them the raw truth, positive or not.

Today Yon's email headline reads more bluntly than the linked text on the website, but the message is the same. Today he feels confident enough to tell his correspondents this:

"We have won the war in Iraq."

No one who uttered those words, short of General Petraeus himself, could be more readily believed than Michael Yon.

We are there.

Our soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen have bled [Sgt. Major Prosser, Deuce Four, at right], but the prize has been victory.

The road ahead is not without pitfalls, but the conclusion -- the real "mission accomplished" moment, is in sight.

On the other hand, Yon is equally blunt in saying that the war in Afghanistan -- never really over, despite reports to the contrary -- is indeed being lost. But it is not unwinnable, if the same determination put forward in the Iraq surge strategy is applied there without delay.

If there is one massive IED embedded in both roads ahead, it would be the election of Barack Obama as president. (That's me speaking, not Yon, who declines to comment on such matters.)

Stay tuned.

SCREECHED-IN!!!

This evening we were welcomed into the fellowship of honorary Newfoundlanders by a ceremony known as "screeching in." It involves various religious postures and distributions which could perhaps be considered a bit blasphemous if it weren't all fer the laughs, ya know.

To start with, ya gets in a semi-circle with yer shoes off, ya see, and den ya kneels down on da floor. Den da skipper, 'e serves up the goods to all assembled, while the first mate reads off some quotated bits to teach ya da symbolism der.

First ya has a Purity peppermint nob, standin' for da sweetness o' da fraish air an' such. Den ya gets a chunk o' hard tack (also by Purity -- I t'ink we has a genuine sponsor tie-in deal goin') to remind yas of the hardships of life on da rock. (Do I detect a smatterin' o' "Why is this night different from every other night"? Ahoy-vay, matey.)


Den we moves on to a taste of fat pink bologna, which symbolizes.....well, ya got me.





Next we stands up and, after stumblin' half-arsed through the Newfoundland national anthem, we begins a one-by-one Catholic-style veneration-like ritual, where each initiate has to come forward and "kiss da cod" -- its fraish, an' gutted, and straight out o' de oice -- an' it looks at ya wid a sorta com'ithery expression, its nasty little wormy mustaches hangin' down and it eyes wide with curiosity. So we kisses da cod, der.

Finally, we gets to da Prodestant portion o' da program, where buddy comes out wid little trays all covered with tiny glasses full of liquid, kinda low-church communion-like. But they was all filled with Screech, y'see, that fine old Newfoundland drink which is a kind of rum spiked with ethanol er somethin'. And ya takes yer shot glass, waits until everybody has one, and then ya knocks it back in one great whack.

My guess is that in the ordinary way of things, this last ritual would have continued until most of the assembly was proudly horizontal. But there were kids involved (who got nothin' but cranberry juice) so that was the end of it.

We gets our official certificates and a copy of the anthem, and was packed off to dinner.

Later this evening, skipper comes round by the house to give us a special prize: we got the promiscuous cod! -- head, tail, eyeballs, wormy things, and all -- to wrestle with for dinner tomorrow.

'Twas a fair evening. Yis, b'y.


AND ON THE HORIZON....

The aforementioned "kids" who also got screeched-in were the crew of the Concordia, a tall ship that doubles as a school for high school students. This group was the summer session class, just four days into their sailing career. They arrived this morning. A taste of old times for this once busy harbour. A fine sight.

"Oh beautiful for spacious skies...." --
What am I doing up here?

YO!!!

HOW DID YOU SPEND YOUR 4TH OF JULY?

1,215 of America's best spent it doing this:

[hat-tip Bob Krumm via Instapundit]





I spent mine in the fresh air of Newfoundland.

Stars and Stripes, flown briefly in Iraq on a CH53, flapped languidly in the ocean breeze.

Beautiful here too. Also spacious skies.

Ain't the same, though.

The Great Seal of ObamaNation:


IT'S GONE, BABY, GONE!






But not before somebody could come up with this:











Some things just cry out for parody.
When it happens, answer-- oh yes, answer.



P.S.:

Saw film of Kite Runner.

Pale and shrunken version of book. "Hassan" best actor of the pack.

Save your money.