FOOTNOTE to last couple of posts:

In case y'all forgot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has proudly admitted to being the beheadsman of Daniel Pearl a couple of wars back.

Interestingly, Pearl's family has some objections to the judicial farce just announced by the Attorney General. Ya think?




'My name is Daniel Pearl... I'm a Jewish American.'

Case closed, apparently.


Lest we forget.

Yes, Your Majesty, no, Your Majesty
Tell us how low to go, Your Majesty
Make some more decrees, Your Majesty
Give us a kick if it please Your Majesty
Give us a kick if you would, Your Majesty --

Oh, that was GOOD,

YOUR

MAJESTY


President Ob[sequious]ama has followed up his non-stop verbal grovelpaloozas and periodic physical kow-tows with the latest instalment, Japanese model. Guess he was trying to make up to Emperor Akihito for all that humiliation suffered by his father Hirohito when he signed off on Japan's surrender to Douglas McArthur. Oh wait -- that never happened... Never mind.



Responding to Mr. Obama's reflexive desire to be the consummate internationalist, the College Republicans of University of Connecticut do a quickie historical review of how the leadership of the rest of the family of nations manages to keep its dignity in the face of the towering authority of the lil' emperor.



What we have here, ladies and germs, is a child, dancing in the world of make-believe -- if he could, he would wear an exotic costume and pretend to be anything other than what he is, in a perpetual Halloween fantasy.

Or, in a more substantial tradition, we have elected him to be the Boy Bishop, the Lord of Misrule, who in medieval times was a peasant child raised to artificial authority and permitted to remake the rules, as a festive game. It was a release valve within a highly structured society, and everybody had a good time. But the much-maligned medievals were smarter than us -- the Boy Bishop had sway for only a day or, at most, the Christmas season; and he misruled nothing more than a household or, at best, a diocese. And he knew the rules of the game. He did not try to enshrine heresy, or legalize felonious acts. He was a temporary Robin Hood who indulged his neighbours in a brief spell of treats and loosened tongues, tempered by some genuine religious duties to lead the people in prayer.

The medievals (and some of the 'Renaissanciers', at least in Spain) had another good idea about those in high office: the need for a court jester with full, unparalleled license to take them down a peg and remind them of their fallibility. Mr. Obama, not surprisingly, has appointed no Jester Czar to provide periodic jolts of human reality into The One's crystal palace of hubris. Too bad -- he'd be a busier fool than King Lear's. Poor Yorrick, etc.






There's at least one possible explanation as to why the President keeps abasing himself before foreign rulers: it's his veiled way of mooning his fellow Americans.












NOT A METROSEXUAL

IT'S AN O.J. DAY:

CONFESSED TERRORISTS WILL HAVE THEIR DAY
IN NEW YORK CIVILIAN COURT

When I was busy re-designing icons for an earlier post, I forgot one -- strangely enough, it's the first one I had thought of. That's because it took me only about the first six months of 2009 to arrive at the unlooked-for belief that, some time within the first half of the first term of the Obama presidency, there will be a serious and widespread public outcry on the following theme:

Let's round it up to a year, since the ceaseless self-regard of this president prompted him to open the first-ever "Office of the President-elect", complete with its own knock-off official seal in the ubiquitous poofter blue, just one year ago this week. [W.S.Gilbert gave us the anthem: "Bow, bow, to the President/god elect...."]

It has been a year of staggering hubris, Janus-faced politicking, kindergarten finger-pointing, the unmasking of radical ideology, and an administration for which the word "BANKRUPT" has a dozen different shades of meaning, all of them body blows to the American body politic.

But let it be recorded that the week of November 9 was a turning point for even this turncoat, tin-pot turd of a regime, for it was the coming together of events which exposed the president as pathologically detached from normal human sensibilities, as he:

--told preposterous lies about the grotesque unemployment levels he has created,

--played 52-pick-up with the whole spectrum of hands he has been dealt in the strategy for Afghanistan ("the right war", as he once had us believe),

--made a dead dog's breakfast of his response to the first mass terrorist attack on American soil since George W. Bush raised a bullhorn in the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center,

and, for his master-stroke,

--skulked out of town leaving his Attorney General to break it to the citizenry that the mastermind of that pile of smoking ruins will be deposited in Manhattan to launch the biggest legal farce since O.J. had a glove fitting.

My God, this man works fast!!!

I'll leave it to the man whose intelligence, integrity, and gift for the verbal slam-dunk stuffin' are making him the shining star of modern journalism, Professor Krauthammer, to lay out the case against the accused:





As they say in the vernacular, Mr. Obama has stepped in it -- so deep, so gaggingly putrid, that he will never get the stink off him, and is in grave danger of making himself unwelcome in any gathering, indoors or out. What's truly breathtaking is that he apparently continues to believe he smells like lilacs in springtime and always will.

What Mr. Obama has failed to grasp (despite being the most intelligent being to ever take over the oval -- blessed with Divine faculties which will cause the sea levels recede and the polar bears to play hockey) is that he got to where he is with the support of just a sliver over half the American voters who bothered to show up, and that a substantial portion of those (a minority, but not a small one) voted for a man who ran for office as a centrist, a healer, a post-racial, post-partisan mountain-top sage. On the other side of the scales, he also came into office with just under half the people wanting the other guy -- but many of those wishing him well enough, and hoping for smooth waters with "no-drama Obama" at the helm.

What Mr. Obama has failed to grasp is that support for him has done a significant tilt in the opposite direction -- it's just under half the country that supports him now, and just over half that gives him thumbs down. And it's not just that the latter wish they'd gotten that other guy (who on his worst day would have been a better president, beyond question), but that they feel deceived not only as to Obama's intentions and policies, but as to his competence and his character. A growing portion of these not only disagree with their president, they are repulsed and infuriated by him -- even as they are energized and exhilarated at their own positive activism against his plans.

What happened today, issuing from the Attorney General's office, was a dark-alley mugging, a Judas kiss, a cold and swift knife in the back. I believe that this hapless, clueless president has turned a corner today in his rapidly deteriorating relationship with his countrymen -- and what he will see, if he has eyes to see it, is a shadowy path ahead, bordered by a hissing gauntlet of restless shapes whose patience is on the wane.

Before he's home and dry, it's entirely possible that they may be hissing that word, "Resign."

REMEMBRANCE

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month a family of disparate nations pays tribute to those who have taken up arms to defend their homelands and protect their families. In the U.S. the day is for "Veterans", those who have fought and lived to tell the tales -- "Memorial Day" in the spring is devoted specifically to those who gave their lives.


Canada, England, and other nations upon whom the wholesale slaughter of World War I had such immediate and devastating impact, reserve the day of Armistice to remember the dead, and call it "Remembrance Day." It is usually a day so sombre that it really has no equivalent in the more optimistic culture of us Yanks.


This Remembrance Day I will dedicate my prayers to remembering someone I have never met but who is almost as real for me as any son of mine. Today I remember Captain Kyle Van de Giesen, Marine Corps helicopter pilot, who died at age 29 in a helicopter crash in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on October 26.


He leaves behind him a wife, an 18-month-old daughter, and a brand new son whose birth, yesterday, he did not live to see.

Kyle will spend this Remembrance Day in my heart because his career as a student at St. Anselm's College, recruitment under Captain Goedecke, summers at Officer Candidate School, graduation and commission on the St. A's quad, ultimate posting to a base in California, and deployment to the far side of the globe into a world of dust and enemies, runs parallel to that of Captain Cincinnatus, my own son -- age 29, Marine helicopter pilot, husband and father, for whom Kyle was a friend, a comrade, and a model.

At St. Anselm's, in Manchester, New Hampshire, where the two future Marines' paths crossed, Kyle was remembered at a service at the college war memorial, a quiet corner of the quad which was built during Kyle's years at the school, and which will bear his name inscribed among the generations of alumni heroes.

Kyle spent his first year at St. A's continuing his stellar record as a quarterback, but he then gave up football to concentrate on his studies. His impact on the fledgling college team was remembered on October 31, with his name and number emblazoned on the field. Kyle was laid to rest on November 6 in North Attleboro, Mass., amid an outpouring of sympathy and support from his entire community, withat least a thousand strangers lining the streets in silent respect for his funeral procession. Four days later, on the 234th birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps, Kyle became a father again.

Despite the fact that I truly don't want to, I can't help but imagine what the Van de Giesen family is going through right now. Their celebration of the birth of the new baby is as much about courage as it is about joy. May God bless them in their time of need, have mercy on them in the moments of despair, and guide the nation for which Kyle gave his life, to reward his sacrifice with the victory that is within its reach.

Captain Kyle Rolf Van de Giesen
April 14, 1980 - October 26, 2009

Requiescat in pace.
Semper Fidelis

FREIHEIT

Today marks the day that the wall, built for the unusual purpose of keeping people in as well as out, came tumbling down by force of sheer human free will, and no small amount of courage.

Take note, new heralds of post-modern socialism: the people of East Germany gave each other courage, they gathered quietly, they got just forceful enough, then through the first available crack they power-walked, they skipped, they danced, they laughed and smiled, and they made an orderly rush to FREEDOM.




It was kind of like a tea-party, though it had percolated up from decades of genuine starvation of every kind.

I remember it, as clearly as I remember the other landmarks of my baby-boom lifetime. Even clearer is my memory of Christmas 1989, when Leonard Bernstein conducted a concert of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in Berlin, played by musicians and choristers from all over the world (including both Germanies), with the lyrics of the famous Ode to Joy ("Freude") altered to be an Ode to Freedom ("Freiheit").



[warning -- the video ends abruptly! -- to avoid disappointment, buy the DVD!]

But the dancing, the pride, and the determination have much in common with the growing strength of the movement which stands between this Obama-captained Ship of Fools, and the perilous shoals towards which they're steering; and in the end -- count on it, Commodore -- there will be an orderly rush to freedom. And you and your personal "300" (do we have that many czars yet?) will be left standing at the gates, looking perplexed and bypassed by history.

Count on it, Madame Speakress (count 220 to 215!). Count on it, Lord Axelrod of Mordor. Count on it.


In the meantime, celebrations of real history go on in Berlin, but the Reader of the Free World is too busy to attend. FORE!

As Toby Harnden of London's Telegraph reminds us, it's a good thing that previous presidents found time to make a stopover.



[Big mo': slide forward to minute 1:15]


THE PRICE OF FREIHEIT IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE

And Col. Ralph Peters is beginning wonder whether we have the stomach, and the army, to be vigilant for even a couple of minutes.

THUNDERSTRUCK.

AGAIN.

AT THE ENEMY WITHIN.

It is a difficult task to collect one's thoughts, to try and paint a picture from the trickle of news, and to formulate a response to the freakish nature of the massacre at Fr. Hood. I expect it will come into focus over the next week or so, despite the best of efforts of a perverse media establishment and the President they worshiped into office to spin and wring and mangle the data so as to steer us away from the obvious conclusions.

I have but one thought so early in the story: how delicious it is that a homicidal devotee of the one of the [if not THE] most misogynist cultures in human history was halted in his murderous tracks by a gun-totin', pants-wearin', ass-kickin', baby-makin', soldier-lovin'
W-O-M-A-N.

Meet Sgt. Kimberley Munley.

Hear her roar.

Take your burqa, and shove it, Major Jihad, you tiny little man. She even took a through-and-through bullet of yours, but it didn't stop her from putting a stop to you. May you recover enough from the ass-whoopin' she gave you, just to up and die of shame.


SPEAKING OF TINY LITTLE MEN

...anybody home?



The Procrastinator-in-Chief acquitted himself with his customary 'cool' -- that charming mixture of icewater in the veins and stumble-bum incompetence we have come to expect, as he mounted the podium after the massacre, and addressed the crisis as about (you should pardon the expression) bullet-point 4 in the notecards -- after due deference to our 'first Americans' (a new blended term for the multicultural lexicon) and their convention, and a friendly 'shout-out' to someone he personally had pinned the Presidential Medal of Freedom on only last August -- Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- except the President called it the Congressional Medal of Honor. Honor, freedom, whatever...

After several minutes of this self-ingratiating b.s., Mr. Obama finally remembered to pull a long face and talk about the "tragedy" at Ft. Hood. Except it wasn't a tragedy -- tragedy would be if 13 people died in an avalanche. It was an act of jihadist slaughter, sir. The murder of our nation's defenders within what should be the safe confines of their own home base, in their own home country. And all you can say, little man, is that we shouldn't "jump to conclusions." Aw, go ahead, Mr. President -- jump.

Jump into that nice dark suit. Put away the nine-iron. Another photo op, comin' your way.



Another baker's dozen of The Best of Us -- requiescant in pace.

CINCINNATUS TELLS US OF THE DEATH OF HIS FRIEND.



One of the best.

I’ve been plotting out this post in my head for a week or so, working on the graphics, and accumulating links. By coincidence, I have found myself galloping to keep up with the realities that have bolstered my own ideas – life imitating art, truth being stranger than fiction, all that kind of stuff. However, I will lay things out in the order as conceived, in hopes to “infotain.”


IMAGE IS EVERYTHING

The first time I ever saw the Che-style Obama face was on the now-famous wall of the Houston Obama campaign headquarters, which lies between my sister's house and the church. There was the tri-colour paint-by-number graphic which has now become the icon of hopey-changitude, supersized on a large mustard wall. At the time I first saw it, Obama was to me an amusing, sophomoric poseur whose jet-puffed platitudes one could hardly imagine fooling anybody. Heh.

As time passed and the unthinkable became the electable, that stretch of matte
mustard wall and its painted poster art just screamed for some kind of comment. It's taken awhile, but this past week some poor sod just couldn't take it anymore and went a little jiggy with a spray can. It was just a matter of time. With that in mind, I've done a little embroidering of my own on the Icon of The One, with appropriate links and meditations.

ITEM: OBAMA JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OVERTURNS ELECTION RESULTS
in smalltown North Carolina --

THE MESSAGE: black citizens of Kinston are too STUPID to vote for candidates instead of parties

Local voters of Kinston, N.C. decided, by a ballot initiative vote of TWO to ONE, that candidates in certain local elections would not be identified by party affiliation. Nobody complained, nobody rallied the "nay" voters to fight the outcome of vote. But the nannying busybodies of the Obama administration "reached out" from inside the Beltway to tell the voters of Kinston, N.C. that they were not capable of making decisions for themselves.

Though black voters outnumber white ones in Kinston by a ratio of two to one, so the measure for non-partisan candidates could not have passed without the black population's approval, Attorney General Holder and Co. have conjured up some bogus "civil rights" complaint as justification for unilaterally overturning the local referendum result.

Obviously, in the opinion of the DOJ operatives, black voters in Kinston MUST necessarily see their interests served ONLY by Democrats, and will be unable to identify which candidate will serve their interests unless he or she is identified during the campaign and on the ballot as a Democrat. Without a party affiliation spelled out in black and white (ahem), black voters will be prevented from exercising their right [their DUTY?]to vote [Democrat].


ITEM: in case you've been living in an abandoned hermitage hut on Skellig Michael and missed it,

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION KEEPS UP ALL-OUT OFFENSIVE AGAINST FOX NEWS,

with the usual asides for Rush Limbaugh and all conservative talk-radio gabbers

Nobody could have missed the story, as recounted here, or here, or here. All during the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama couldn't contain his obsessing about Sean Hannity, and avoided any direct contact with FOX until the nights of the Republican convention, when he sat down with Bill O'Reilly, and got the ONLY hardball-ish questions he has ever endured. Once he was elected, it was presumed that The One would accept his acceptance, and rise above the opposition criticism which is served up to every elected official.

Bu-u-u-u-t no-o-o-o-o-o -- he's still a little, um, jumpy.

So when the few voices of opposition, or mere probitive curiosity, among the media try to do their job and face off with these powerful agents of mass hopey-changitude who have swept into office, suddenly it has become as important to the new administration to target and stifle its opposition as it is to find and carry out solutions to the grave problems confronting us.

What needs to be said is being said, here, there, and everywhere, by Republicans and Democrats alike who see it for the childish sandbox feud that it is. But it is worth pointing out, in the most graphic way, that Mr. Obama is drifting perilously close to his "nattering nabobs of negativism" moment. With his dithering, his puffery, his petulance, and his Janus-faced politicking, Mr. Obama does not need to take on the cartoon persona of Nixon's disgraced (for chump change compared to Charlie Rangel.....) Veep Spiro Agnew.

Mr. Obama, this warning is probably too late, but YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO THERE.


ITEM: LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM

That's the title of a tiresome book by tiresome Resident Senate Comedian Al Franken, he of Minnesota. But Google any variation of the word "LYING" and the word "OBAMA" and you'll get literally millions of choices, and only a few of the top ones are Birthers and other Moonbats. Some are even disillusioned liberals.

The subjects of the lying are almost too numerous to count: --

-- TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT - legislation posted online
-- GITMO, DETENTION, RENDITION POLICIES - change!!!
-- AFGHANISTAN - war of necessity, pursuit of the Taliban, Bin Laden, Al Qaida
-- HEALTH CARE - single-payer, illegals, abortion, rationing, duty to die
-- CAP AND TRADE - tax hikes, soaring electricity cost
-- GAY RIGHTS - marriage, military
-- EMPLOYMENT (and maximum unemployment)
-- STIMULUS SPENDING
-- ACORN
-- HE'S NOT THE [insert name of radical associate] I KNEW

And the beat goes on.

Over the past two years various people have made the observation that at least some portion of support for Obama as both candidate and president comes from people who support him in spite of his attempts to sound centrist, because the unwhispered secret is that they know he's lying -- it's just something he has to do to get elected and appease certain groups. (Even Jeremiah Wright said so.)

Just to refresh the memory, John Hinderaker at Powerline probably said it best.

But if there is one drum that the President has beaten incessantly, starting with Inauguration Day, and at every opportunity at home and abroad ever since, in the most degrading and unseemly fashion, it is the fake and fraudulent oil drum of GEORGE BUSH BASH-AND-TRASH.

Unable to stop playing this tune to excuse his every shortcoming, Obama, and his henchmen, pulled out every stop this past week with the most heinous and flagrant falsehood yet: that over seven years at war, the Bush administration "never asked key questions" about a strategy for Afghanistan. This is a breathtaking and COLOSSAL LIE.

Key questions were asked, and answered, and turned over to BOTH candidates for president in 2008, and then followed up on with the winning team during the transition, at which time the Obama team REQUESTED SILENCE about the findings -- why? so they could claim credit for the strategy, and lie about its source later on? do they plan the lies that far in advance? We'll leave that to speculation.

Weekly Standard Official Hottie Stephen Hayes is too polite when he calls the Obamanoids "ingrates". Suffice it to say that, on the most important issues facing the nation and the world, they are prepared to LIE, for the most self-sodden reasons. Puke-making.

Obama's reflexive Bush-bashing even spilled over to the First Lady (and I use the term loosely), who wasted no time in projecting her own obliviousness to the plight of military families onto former First Lady Laura Bush -- a move that was not only low-class, low-rent, and profoundly unladylike, it was also a COLOSSAL LIE. [thank you, hollering Cassandra]


ITEM: in a similar vein, artery, or what you will,

OBAMA FIDDLES WHILE AFGHANISTAN BURNS

I won't speak to this, because others more qualified should have their say. Over at Blackfive, OEF Afghanistan veteran Deebow writes an OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT. Pithy quote:

Mr. President, deciding to do nothing is still a decision.

I demand, decency demands, Americans who believe in victory demand, and most importantly, the American families with family members in the fight -- who certainly have the most invested and unquestionably the most to lose-- demand that the politics, excuse making and dithering end and that you give the necessary support to the men and women who are bearing the battle and taking the fight to our enemies. I am not asking, I am telling you to listen to those with the knowledge and skills that can turn the tide of this rapidly resurgent enemy we face and to give them the resources they ask for.

ITEM: THE WHOLE LIFE AND ART THING

JULIUS CAESAR

The spousal unit and I took a rare outing to farm country and dropped in at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, as it is once again calling itself, despite the fact that non-'Speare plays in performance still outnumber 'Speareworks considerably. We'd heard good things about this year's Julius Caesar, so that was our play of choice.

[sidebar: Let me take the opportunity say how very much I liked the production, though it was not flawless. I thought Brutus was poorly played, on the whole, though he got better as time passed. As Caesar Geraint Wynn Davies built his character in a particular way, not the only way it could be done, but it worked for me. Cassius, Tom Rooney, looked lean, but not especially hungry, kind of dweeby in fact -- but he was fantastic -- excellent, intelligent reading of the role. Ditto Mark Antony (the "fantastic", not the dweeby), sizzling in the hands of Jonathan Goad -- great stuff.

Costumes and sets were unusual, and have met with negative criticism. I'd have changed a few things, but on the whole I get what the designer was doing and I approve. Amusing sidelight: Caesar's wife, Calphurnia, was played, not memorably, by a lovely black actress, Yanna McIntosh, dressed in mustard yellow and looking for all the world like Michelle Obama. Maybe it meant something -- maybe it was just fun. Couldn't tell ya. But in general, Kudos to everybody.]

I was especially interested in seeing this play because, although JC has never been one of my favourite Shakespeares, I taught it and directed an abridged version with a class of grade 7 & 8 students this past spring, and so went to the theatre with a more developed idea of how I thought it should go than I would otherwise have had.

As I taught the play last spring, quite unintentionally it kept hitting me on the head with various passages about the dangerously growing hubris of the new conqueror, especially as expressed by the "lean and hungry" Cassius. The parallels to both candidate and now President Obama were eerily obvious. Naturally I was prepared to take my place in the audience at Stratford and have these sentences resonate for me, in a way that I expect few in the audience, and NONE on the stage, were likely to share.

Well, I don't know what the director's intentions or politics may be -- I have to doubt that he is as critical of the Annointed One as I am -- but he did seem to be having some fun with the possible modern parallels of the whole mob/cult effect generated by an arrogant, larger-than-life, too-good-to-be-true, amn't-I-almost-godlike victor assuming the throne of empire.

...And this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature and must bend his body...
...Ye gods, it doth amaze me
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world
And bear the palm alone...
Why, man, he doth bestride the world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
...Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!...
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.

Ah, savour it, fellow right-wing crazies! Is't not Obamarama writ large?

Large indeed -- for what did we see when the curtain rose, but a colonnade upstage, with three large banners hung between its sets of columns: red, navy, light blue, and at the bottom in dark blue letters [good Roman capitals, they were] the name emblazoned, "CAESAR". Now what does that remind us of??!! I couldn't believe it. It could NOT have been accidental. As they say on the blogs, "HEH."

Foolishly I left the theatre without making sure that the graphic on the banner was to be found in my programme, and alas the only version I've been able to find is this one, where the colours are not so obvious and the imperious head is hidden behind the (rather too doughy) face of Brutus as played (rather too stiffly) by Ben Carlson. I shall look further afield to see if I can find it unadorned, but you get the idea. Heh, indeed.

That was to be the triumphant coda to today's post -- but lo! What madness through yonder internet porthole lies? Could it be another Obama flunkie, Rocco Landesman, appointed to "remake" the National Endowment for the Humanities, telling us that the President is "the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar"? Is this dude for real? Does he not know what a (a) stupid, (b) uncomfortable, (c) factually incorrect, and (d) did I mention stupid? remark that is? But there it was, on Drudge, for all the world to see.

Naturally it did not take long for persons of actual intelligence to swoop down and humiliate this fellow, with facts, for starters, and better grammar and more logical thought process for the main course. Landesman at least has enough of a grasp of the basic humanities to know that what he said -- "powerful writer" -- is not really what he meant, but rather that Obama is the most powerful man who is also a writer since Julius Caesar, if ya know what I'm sayin', blah, blah..... Forget it, dude. You are just wrong in every conceivable way, and the boys at Powerline and The Corner are more than happy to show you how.

And that needlessly specific claim that Mr. Obama is "the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt"? Pass the salt friend, good chance you are gonna eat this one. Just check it out, or ask Bill Ayers [via Bluegrass Bulletin].

There was a Caesar -- here comes such another?

And for the love of God and the all the gods, this does NOT constitute a death-wish, a threat, an incitement for Harry Reid and Chris Dodd and Barbara Boxer to stab Barack on the floor of the Senate. Or even at the Theatre of Pompey.

NO.

NOT.

NUNH-UH.

IT'S DIABOLICAL, IT'S FRAUDULENT, IT'S OUTRAGEOUS

MOSTLY, IT'S HILARIOUSLY COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE

HACK JOURNO'S CRANK OUT PALIN BIO PARODY

Don't be fooled. When you go to buy Sarah Palin's Going Rogue at your local book emporium, be sure to pick up the one with the cover photo that says "I'm enjoying the crisp Alaskan breezes", not the one that says "I'm in the political spotlight in my cute red suit."

By gum, they're a clever bunch over at O/R books and The Nation, who have collected some of the Left's finest commentators to bury their hatchets in the former Alaska Governor. Essays by a herd of snorting journo's are bound together for the reader's delectation, including such sterling prose stylists as Naomi Klein, Frank Rich, and Eve Ensler (think we'll get her vagina to crank out a monologue?). Can't wait to hear what they have to say? Then pick up the designer knock-off, the $10 Rolex of political biographies -- it's the one on the LEFT:


You'll know it by its paper cover -- the publishing world's equivalent of "direct-to-video". A scam so cheesy, even National Public Radio thinks it might be ethically challenged.

But if you want the real story, by the only Genuine Star of the '08 political constellation, lean to the RIGHT and get the other one, HARDCOVER, hot off the presses in mid-November.

Don't be fooled by these people who are SO much cleverer than YOU!!!

What does the O/R in O/R Books stand for? The brand new publishing partnership of Oakes [John, whose clients have included Abbie Hoffman and John Waters] and Robinson [Colin, who previously published Noam Chomsky and Nobel Prize imposter Rigoberta Menchu]. Talk about pedigree, pal!!!

Phew!! That was a close one. It's almost too much for the cradle-to-grave welfare-dependent mind to process, and we all know that's the book-buying demographic both are aiming for, right?

NFL / MEDIA / POVERTY PIMPS
MESSAGE TO LIMBAUGH
(and all the rest of us in the GLOBAL COMMUNITY):

"NON-MEMBERS OF THE CULT
NEED NOT APPLY"

Talk-radio guru Rush Limbaugh has been dropped (offered the chance to tastefully withdraw, he refused) from the group bid to buy the St. Louis Rams. This went down for one solitary reason: influential people do not like his opinions.


NEWS SHOCKER!!!!

LEFT-WING MEDIA HATE-MONGER OLBERMANN DEFENDS LIMBAUGH'S BID!!!!

Well, let's remember that MSNBC smash-mouth commentator Keith Olbermann was inexplicably promoted from being a full-time sportscaster to some sort of political pundit, so on this subject he's finally found something about which he's in a position to offer analysis. (So happy to give him the opportunity to take a breather from such inspired editorializing as imagining newsblogger Michelle Malkin as a "smashed-up bag of meat with lipstick".)

Olbermann, to his credit [!!!!#$%????], can't understand why anyone would want to prevent Limbaugh from owning a piece of St. Louis's loser football team. Whoa!!!

If even Olbie recognizes the rank idiocy of what has transpired, then it's GOTTA be obvious to one and all.

What is less obvious to many, however, is what this kind of incident signifies about how the United States of America has entered the final, accelerated stages of a hideous transmogrification. Will it escape being a giant rotting cockroach by the end of one term of rule by The Cult? Gallup tells us that membership in The Cult is experiencing creeping shrinkage. That's good. Secretary of State Hillary Broadbottom Clinton is now more popular than The Messiah. I guess (gulp) that's good too. Will civilization survive until 2012?


"POVERTY PIMPS"?

I borrowed that moniker (applied to Race-Shakedown Kingpins Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) from former NFL linebacker and long-time pastor Ken Hutcherson. Vitally important race/color credentials available here.

OVER AT DOC PLUMBO'S, I VENT ABOUT HEALTH CARE

Oh Canada.

Again.

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.