[Transition from Houston to Toronto to Newfoundland successful -- goodbye humidity and hundred-degree heat, plus Toronto smog -- goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Yiss b'y!


Meanwhile, back on the geopolitical stage.....]


WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT


Well, actually we're gonna need a bigger BUS -- for the President -- because it's getting pretty crowded underneath the old one, what with all the folks Mr. Obama has thrown under it.

Maybe one like this will do:

Let's see now.... there was Grandma the typical whitey, and raving "old Uncle" Jeremiah, and Bill the bomber, and Bundler Jim.

And most recently, it was poor old Charles Bolden (General, USMC, retired) head of NASA, who announced [to its target audience] the "foremost" aim of NASA's new direction, as conceived by the [cough, hack] Commander-in-Chief: making the Muslim world feel good about its [LONG] past glories in the spheres of math and science.

La-dee-dah.

OOPS! It was an announcement not well-received when it eventually surfaced back on the home front, but the Obama administration characteristically [gack, wheeze] stood its ground.

OOPS! No, wait, do-over please. As the public and the punditry turned up the heat, the Obama administration characteristically took a mulligan on its previous position, and delegated Press Spokesbuffoon Robert Gibbs to take it all back.

Bus. Bolden. Under. Finis.

But, let's face it, folks -- these people under the bus are just not the [fill in the blank] we knew.

Newsflash!

Gettin' really crowded under that bus, what with Jumpin' Joe Biden throwing the whole durned NAACP under it.

Joe tells the world that (pace the recent resolution of the ENDOUBLEACEYPEE), the Tea Party movement is not inherently racist.

Who knew? [hat-tip Instapundit]


....Now, back to the foggy nights and sunny days of the New Founde Lande, where, if the sun and the wind and the clouds are just right, the lapping waves turn a truly splendid shade of amethyst.

What day is it again?.......

Terrorists -- 1

Me -- ZIP

Arrived only 40 minutes ahead of Air Canada departure instead of 60 minutes required for international (Canada, eh?) due to spin-0ff effects of a FREAKIN' HURRICANE, okay? Was (legally but stupidly) refused permission to board, and had to listen to the flight being called while I waited to re-book. Have now missed today's flight to Newfoundland, and am waiting to board my flight a mere 24 hours late.

Sitting in bar listening to Vuvuzelas blaring from nearby tube. Air travel has been an OWN GOAL since yesterday morning. Or perhaps "15-love", advantage Islamofascists. Red card, two-putt, sand-trap, double-fault, shoot-out, service break, and general balls-up.

Air travel: giving you that Irish-farmer-in-steerage-for-a-month feeling you can't get anywhere else. An overpriced experiential hair-shirt for the modern day. Unsurvivable without cell-phones. Other than that, an immense convenience. Must dash -- plane leaves from 200 feet away in 2.5 hours -- can't be late.

OOH


GOO




WHO DO?




DO WHAT? WHEN?


DO-WOP-A-DO



DIDDLY SQUAT, THAT'S WHAT


I wasn't successful at finding an embeddable video of Al Haig saying "I'm in charge here" -- but he might as well be, and he's dead.

Here's how it looks from inside the Louisianna sand berm where Bobby Jindal is
trying to keep his head from exploding. Headline:

CRUDE-SUCKING BARGES STOPPED
BY COAST GUARD









Meanwhile back at the ranch, er, golf course...





Last time a President started picking at the sand on a beach, we got Bill Clinton in Normandy, setting up his "IKEA cross" [some assembly required] out of strategically pre-set pebbles.





But I'm bettin' Mr. O tends to think of himself more like this:



Actually, the episode that comes much more readily to mind is.....

Oh no, you won't catch me being the first one to make an Uncle Remus joke about this mess!


Nota bene: While cruising for pictures of the tar-balls coming out of the Gulf, I was amazed how many of the oily ducks and beaches illustrating the news stories and blogs showed up (during the "save picture" command) with labels that indicated they were from an oil spill near Korea or Australia (they've had more than 25 since 1903). Fake but accurate. I'm just sayin'.

KERFUFFLE ALERT

SHE WHO GAFFES LAST, GAFFES BEST

(apparently for the very last time)

Perennial nagging hag of the White House Press Corpse, HELEN THOMAS, put her dainty foot in it last week by committing the ultimate political gaffe -- that's where you accidentally say what's really on your mind.

What's on her mind? Here's a sample of what even Jack Shafer, left-leaning journo at Slate, called her "screw you" technique of turning a question into a tedious one-note lecture.


Anybody who was paying attention already knew the gist of Thomas's "one note": that the very existence of Israel is an affront to the cosmos. But instead of veiling this belief beneath distorted "questions" about incidents like the Gaza flotilla boarding, she just spat out the basics as she has always understood them. Questioned by journalistic Rabbi, David S. Nesenoff, at a White House Jewish Heritage celebration on May 27, Helen vented her nonagenarian spleen and proffered her very own "final solution":



Good grasp of history there, Helen! Let's see..... Abraham is called by God, and travels from Ur of the Chaldees to ....... Warsaw. Right.

[Apparently there is more to the interview, which will be appearing soon at RabbiLIVE.com -- can't wait to find out what happened next!]

YidWithLid went personal (tsk tsk) -- "Helen Thomas is as fair and open minded as she is good looking" -- but has followed up with some interesting observations about how much anti-Semiticism is ignored in the upper echelons of the public pantheon -- Al Sharpton, for starters -- and that perhaps Helen shouldn't be fired if all these other people still have a pulpit. Point taken. He updates that she has been allowed to retire, and that "It is sad that the controversy surrounding Thomas will now end and the media will go back to ignoring Anti-Semitism within its ranks."

[Our friendly Yid also breaks another story of Reuters news service engaging in "fauxtography", i.e. the deliberate monkeying with pictures that are then released as news photos, having been altered just enough to alter the news itself. Check out Reuters' selective use of the "smudge" and "crop" commands to change your perception of the Gaza flotilla kerfuffle.]

Amusing sidelight: my new anti-virus package from Viper had this to say when I looked up a link to the Huffington Post:

VIPRE has determined that the site

you are trying to visit is malicious.

Heh.


On a totally unrelated note:
Also via Slate, we have Nike's new World Cup Ad, which Seth Stevenson calls "The greatest ad I've ever seen." Have to admit, it's pretty amazing. We report, you decide.

Cool.

IRONY ALERT

The Gateway Pundit (Jim Hoft) makes an interesting observation, if not exactly a point. I don't think you can really compare a presidential [non]response to an industrial accident with a president seizing an opportunity to right a tyrant's old wrong as a tangential act within a military campaign. If there is any real point of comparison it is that the current president has done absolutely nothing, with maximum fanfare -- while the former president did something of immense historic and humanitarian consequence with no fanfare whatsoever.

So it's an irony cage-match between marshland and marshland. The "winner and still champeen" is.........

....the Marsh Arabs of Iraq.

See here, here, and here.



UPDATE:
Gateway also highlights one of the recent monster items on the presidential agenda, the appearance of Sir Paul McCartney at the White House to perform and receive an award (glad to know we have our priorities straight -- got a minute to meet with the Governor of Arizona, Mr. President?).

Sir Paul tastefully chose this occasion to take a disgustingly low-rent cheap shot at the former President, by exalting Bush's successor as finally being a president who knows what a library is. Ha-ha, what a knee-slapper, you old Liverpudlian! Top of our class at Liverpool Institute, were we, Mr. MBE?

On top of being rude beyond words to the host country, let's remember that this snot-nosed pronouncement comes from a billionaire pop-icon who made a spectacle of himself (with his gold-digging ex-wife in tow) during a Larry King Show debate about the Canadian seal hunt: Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams invited the McCartneys to come to the province and observe the facts of the hunt in person, to which Sir Paul replied, "Well, we're here, Danny. You don't need to invite us. Thanks for the invitation, but we're here. We're actually in the studio here. We are in Newfoundland. And we saw the seals yesterday. "

Only problem was, as Danny pointed out, they weren't in Newfoundland -- they were on Prince Edward Island, where they had gone for their photo-op because the climate and arrangements were more hospitable. Oh what the heck -- you've seen one Canadian province (PEI 5600 square miles) you've seen them all (Newfoundland 42,000 square miles) . If it's Tuesday, I must be in some snowy place with Mounties......

Enjoy the transcript. The McCartneys made Larry King sound intelligent -- it was a classic performance by Dumb (Paul) and Spectacularly, Monumentally Dumber (Heather).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, limey ar*ehole.

KABOOM

is now

KERPLUNK

Once upon a time I stumbled upon, and then drew attention to, a military blog called "Kaboom" written by a truly talented wordsmith who called himself "Lt G".

The blog Kaboom meandered on through the dusty day-to-day terrors, mysteries, and neighbourhood negotiations of the Iraq theatre, until Lt G wrote something that got Higher all cheesed off, and he was told to stop writing, and to scrub all that had been written so far. It was a terrible blow to his growing readership, and a big black eye for the Army that squelched him.

Contrary to the pooh-poohings of dinosaur media types who want us to believe that everything written by amateurs in the blogosphere will eventually dissolve into irrelevant vapor, Lt.G's loyal readers held tight, kept their ears to the ground, and were Ready to Launch when their faithful scribe, now self-identified as Lt. Matt Gallagher (Retired) published his Iraq chronicles in a book of the same name (Kaboom), and began his equally well-written civilian blog, now called Kerplunk. If you're not already a fan, buy the book, dial up the blog, and join the movement.

Not surprisingly, Gallagher has some words worth reading in the lead-up to Memorial Day. Here are some of the best, in an entry from last week called "Good and Evil":

I interviewed a young Marine corporal yesterday, recently back from Afghanistan, for a magazine article I'm putting together. Over the course of our discussion, he brought up an experience of his that defies human comprehension, even in the context of war.

"We were on a dismounted patrol in Marja ... and walked up on a box in the middle of the street. The IEDs we found were never that obviously placed, but we called EOD (explosive ordnance disposal), just to be on the safe side ... long story short, they came out, checked the box out, and then called us [on-the-ground leaders] up ... the box was empty except for a dead baby. It must've suffocated in there, or starved ... we later found out (through intelligence reports) that The Taliban did it for two reasons: One, it was the kid of a local that had turned some of them in. Two, they just wanted to fuck with us, like they were showing they were capable of anything."

These are ambiguous times we live in. Ambiguous wars, ambiguous purpose, ambiguous intent. In Iraq, sometimes I tried to humanize the enemy, and sometimes I didn't. It all depended on ... well, everything.

But pure evil exists. This wasn't an ambiguous act that occurred in Marja. A murdered innocent, not yet even self-aware. Pure evil in its most obvious and egregious form.

Sometimes, I think pure good must exist, if only to combat the pure evil of the world. Pure evil like this.

Sometimes, I think differently. Sometimes I think that good, at its best, can only aim to be ambiguous, if only because of the eternal flaw of humanity, original sin. And what kind of match is ambiguous good for pure evil?

And sometimes, most times really, I just don't know.

I just don't fucking know.

In spite of it all, Gallagher looks out at the wounded world and finds the silver lining in the clouds. For Memorial Day, he checks out the progress of one of his many colorful companions-in-arms from the Gravedigger platoon (where every man and every location had a colorful nickname to preserve anonymity).

Corporal Matt Wheeler, known as "Hot Wheels", was severely burned and injured in June 2008. When Gallagher finds him winding up two years of surgery, recovery and therapy at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Hot Wheels has gone from learning to walk again, to running two miles, to preparing to enter Mississippi State University next fall. Read some of his family's Caringbridge journal, and you'll know what a long haul it has been for all of them.

In spite of it all, Hot Wheels has this to say:

Being at BAMC is a truly humbling place. Everywhere you turn there is an injured soldier, some with similar injuries, some with worse. You see people who are terrifyingly maimed and disfigured, but when you talk with them, all you hear is how thankful they are for everything they still have.

The question of the day continues to be, in a world of increasing self-absorption and isolation, where do we find these men? These very, very ordinary heroes.

Let's see.... I seem to remember....

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

No, Senator Gigolo, Winter Soldier Sell-out, Unfit Presidential Wannabe, and Crashing Bore John Forbes Cash'n'Kerry.

The Gravediggers did not get "stuck" in Iraq. Lt G, theologian, knows all about Original Sin, AND about Free Will, which he and Bulldog and Big Country and Hot Wheels all exercised, to put themselves on the road to Iraq.

Look them in the eye, Senator, and tell them how not smart they are.

SHOCKER!!

THE WARMING IS OVER

FORMER VEEP AL GORE SPLITS FROM WIFE TIPPER
AFTER 40 YEARS

For those of us who can barely tolerate this egomaniacal windbag for 40 seconds, all our sympathy tips to Tipper, who has finally had enough of the obsessed fat-head and is moving on. Wonder who will get the brand new estate on the California coast with a carbon footprint the size of Oahu.

The Drudge report breaks the unhappy news, and makes appropriate use of a snapshot of the infamous sexual assault Tipper was forced to endure in front of a monster television audience, when Al tried once again, without success, to prove he was a hip, down, groovy guy, by engaging in a painful public mauling of his wife at the 2000 convention. I never understood how anybody could pretend to buy into this moment -- it made me cringe the instant it happened, and I don't know how she resisted the defensive reflex to kick the creep in the groin.



Well, she's kicked him pretty good now. He's been a sad spectacle for quite some time now, and this makes him just that much sadder. Can't imagine we'll be hearing much from him in the near future. All the best to her.

SEEMS THAT OIL ISN'T THE ONLY THING
BP IS PUMPING RANDOMLY
INTO THE AMERICAN NEIGHBOURHOOD

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[hat-tip: The Politico, via Dennis Miller]



OBAMA SALUTES THE FALLEN

EVENTUALLY

A last-minute venue was contrived at Andrews Air Force Base for the President to deliver his soggy Memorial Day address, which had been rained out in Illinois, where a venue had also been contrived at the local military cemetery since the President couldn't be bothered to attend anything at Arlington.

It was late in the evening and Mr. Obama delivered his usual gush of hollow cliches in an especially wooden manner, stumbling over words and marring the syntax as if he had only just been handed the text for the first time and was looking for the teleprompter that wasn't there. It was a massively unimpressive offering from an increasingly underwhelming little man. [At least this year he seems to have mastered the distinctions between May 30 and November 11.]

Meanwhile back at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, Jumpin' Joe Biden rose to the occasion and delivered his wreath and remarks with genuine feeling, making his boss look even weaker by comparison. Good on ya, Joe -- full credit is due to those who know enough to make the right noises when called upon, whatever their own personal and political blind spots. It shows a regard for the Office -- something that continues to escape the little man who holds the Big One.

IT'S LATE AT NIGHT --
BUT NEVER TOO LATE
TO PASS ALONG ONE SMALL...

MEMORIAL DAY MOMENT

J.D. Johannes at Outside the Wire shares a memory of one "ordinary" man who gave the gift of life to 100 or more, all in a day's work.

Sgt. Jason Stegall lived to fight another day, through multiple tours of Iraq where he stared down snipers and massive truck bombs, only to die this past December of complications from an excess of cold & flu medication. In the end, life is nothing but fragile. But for the men who owe their lives to his courage and clear-headed reflexes, even a life cut short is more than worth the living.

A life to remember on Memorial Day.

[hat-tip Power Line]


And a million times a million thanks again to Gary Sinise and Joe Mantegna for hosting a Memorial Day Concert in the front yard of the Capitol -- while the President lounged the day away in his Chicago Chateau Rezko mansion.

[Anybody out there really miss him? hmmm.... thought not.]

NEWSFLASH!

THE ROCK-'EM-SOCK'EM ONE-TWO PUNCH OF BRITISH NATIONAL HEALTH AND BRITISH SOCIAL COLLAPSE:

Woman dies of surgical complications after drunken collision with toilet brush handle.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.....

We are so screwed. [hat-tip: Drudge]

NOT DEAD, JUST AWOL

It's six days till C-Day (Chester Cycle play, bright and early at 8:30 a.m. the 24th -- somebody wake me up by 8:25!!!), but I still observe the world at stolen moments.

BEST BET ON THE 'NET

Is there any better window on that world than American Thinker? Everything on the page seems worth a look (when I have more time) but attention should be paid to a couple of points of curiosity.

Did Tom Hanks' dumba#s remarks about his own production, The Pacific, make you wonder if the series was going to be any good? Reviews have been mixed and "yes, but..." (bad sign), but wonder no more -- Bernie Reeves lays it out cold, and it's not pretty.

On the current front page, AT examines two aspects of human irrationality that helped to elect Barack Obama: sex and racism. [I won't call it "reverse racism", a common term for favouring a racial minority out of guilt and pity -- when you favour or disfavour based on race, it's just racism, impure and simple].

The racism piece is especially interesting, in that it is aimed at black Christians by a one of their own, who reminds his community that the black genocide being carried out in the country's abortion mills has the full and unqualified support of their, as it were, president of choice: in his short and undistinguished political career, Barack Obama has oiled the machine that kills the babies, pre-born, part-born, and post-born alike.


"We are the ones we've been waiting for."


Let's hope that November 2010 is the dawn of the morning after, and by 2012 will see the end of the affair.

2012 Rumor of the Week.

FUN FACTS
about Supreme Court nominee ELENA KAGAN
[important, because, well..... there are so FEW of them]

Evan Gahr, over at Jewish World Review, begins:

Only Barack Obama, who ran for president just two years into his first senate term and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for accomplishments to be named later, could make inexperience a virtue.

And when you're fishing around for evidence of experience, go with what you know -- that is, Kagan and Obama both held the prestigious post of Editor of the Harvard Law Review. [Kagan wrote Very Little, but that's way more than Obama, who wrote Almost Nothing.] In her role as editor, Kagan apparently had an eye for the fiction, which is to say that she may well be the first editor to permit fictional short stories to be published in any law review.

Say what?, you ask -- why would anybody do that? Read on, and it becomes clear: fiction was the vehicle for an anti-white racist professor (Derrick Bell) to publish his wacko theories about the meaninglessness of law in a hopelessly racist America. Mmmm, heady stuff -- thoughtful, original, responsible journalism. Bell, to his credit, gives Elena Kagan full credit for being his enabler.

Fun facts you ought to know -- because there are so few.

Also at JWR, top-flight political analyst Michael Barone weighs in on a similar theme:

...behind their [Obama's and Kagan's] careful avoidance of incendiary issue positions one can find evidence that both the appointer and the appointee share the standpoint of the professor. They bring to public service attitudes that are commonplace in the faculty lounge but not nearly so common in the rest of America...

Obama himself... has pushed big government policies that seem like no-brainers to most professors but have aroused passionate and principled opposition from the public at large. We are seeing what government by the faculty lounge looks like.

[Fun facts on Obama at Harvard -- again, because there are so few.]









"They call me Strider. I will help you take the Ring to Mount Doom."

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Archepiscopessa Pelosi instructs the Church as to its role in furthering the Democratic party's agenda -- struggles with concepts of hierarchical structure and magisterium, stops just short of calling Bishops' teaching authority a "thingy", and moves on to the main point of her address, which is that the Church must tell the unwashed masses how to vote their (her) "theology".

This one's a keeper.




Whoa. You gotta hand it to the woman, she tempts fate with the best of 'em.

Once we had the MAMAS AND THE PAPAS,
the MOTHERS OF INVENTION,
PAPA JOHN CREECH....

Welcome to the FOUNDING FATHERS
music video!

hat-tip to American Thinker

Enjoy.



Nota Bene: my prolonged blogging absences are due to my up-to-the eyeballs involvement in THIS (click pic):


It's the University of Toronto 2010 presentation of the complete Chester Cycle Mystery Plays, May 22-24. So we've got a few weeks. So it's not yet time to

PANIC!

"Embolden our enemies. Undermine our allies. Diminish our country."

Reagan Administration Dep.Asst.Sec-Def Frank Gaffney calls it: this is the Obama Doctrine.

The "embolden and "undermine" elements, one could argue, are not deliberate on Obama's part, but there is no question that the "diminish" element is precisely what he thinks the United States of America needs and deserves, and he has been out to make it happen from the moment he threw his kaffiya into the ring. Gaffney does a compact analysis of the global implications of the Obama "reset" strategy with Russia, and if you're not shuddering by the end of it, you're not paying attention.

Ronald Reagan was some people's idea of "a dangerous man" (as a friend of mine from California once characterized him early in his presidency). But, as we now know, we were never safer.

Gaffney nails it. With our new "danger man", we haven't been this unsafe since the Cuban missile crisis. Mr. Obama wants us to think he's a J. Pierpont Finch, but sorry, this time I'm with the Suits: we gotta stop that man.




[Actually, now that I think of it, J. Pierpont Finch was a flattering, calculating, disingenuous climber who went from the mailroom to the executive suite by halfway through Act One. An apt comparison after all.]

JOKE:

A NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIAL GOES INTO A BAR AND ASKS,

"HEY! HOW MUCH COVERAGE DO YOU THINK THIS WOULD GET IF MY PRESIDENT WAS A REPUBLICAN?"

A truly disturbing moment from the unfortunately-named General Jim Jones. I'm with the Marine who writes in the comments, "General you need to honor the Marine Corps by resigning immediately."

P.S., General: Your President is a joke too -- more and more every day. Remember 2004? -- when he told the Democratic convention

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

But today, this post-partisan post-racial President lays his race-cards on the table in a pathetic plea for votes this coming Remember-November.

What a towering figure in American history:



This is a man so small, he's a perfect fit for the fine print at the bottom of the page.

NOT DEAD, JUST BUSY AND AWOL, part deux

OREGON, MY OREGON

I still remember the State Song, learned at age 7, though I haven't been there in about 35 years.

First verse:

Land of the Empire Builders, land of the Golden West
Conquered and held by free men, fairest and the best
Onward and upward ever, forward and on and on
Hail to thee, land of heroes, my Oregon.

Fairest, best, golden, free, heroes. Nice work.

My personal favorite from Sarah Palin's recent trip to Eugene, home of the University of Oregon:

Heh.

And who could forget that earlier Golden Oregon moment, at a Portland anti-war[Bush] rally.

I call it "The Peace Movement."

REMEMBER -- MAY 20 is "EVERYBODY DRAW MOHAMMAD DAY"

A tribute to the Fatwa of Death proclaimed upon the lives of South Park cartoonists Parker and Stone. I've got a few ideas.......

This whole phenomenon of inter-religious bigotry and hatred has brought me to tears.

No, wait. It's the F#$@-ing pollen.




I wish all the trees would just eschew the Public Display of Affection.



Eschew.


Gesundheit.

SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO STAND BACK,
AND LET EVENTS UNFOLD.

[posting date approximate -- small Blogger meltdown]

As my old Dad used to say....

WHAT COMES AFTER 75?

'76!
THAT'S THE SPIRIT!





HILARIOUS

While vast swathes of the left have proved themselves blindly vicious when protesting en masse,





















or when confronting their opponents in little clumps, occasionally beating the living snot out of them, the spirit of the new American Tea-Party retains the sense of humor you KNEW was going to save the day ever since November 2000 when they came up with

When the desperate left showed its hand by publicly recruiting tea-party crashers, the patriots were ready and came out swinging -- that is to say, came out prepared to merely point out the obvious, and let the hilarity ensue.

They did exactly the right thing, and, as is clear once again from the one-off home-made signs [not the Soros-funded mass-produced slick graphics]

nobody had to orchestrate their response and feed them their lines. Gotta love these people.

He who laughs last, laughs best.

He who laughs in the face of anger and duplicity, takes the high ground.




Oh, I forgot -- people on the left have been known to do their own home-made signs too:

NOT DEAD -- JUST BUSY AND AWOL

The Anchoress will speak for me, with observations on the sight of Saul Obamsky, Destroyer of Economies, poking his digit at Canadian PM Stephen Harper, the one leader in the Western world whose government has boringly shepherded their country through the world's recent fiscal crises with a remarkably steady hand, as we watch the Canadian dollar creeping up to par, and our Maple Leafy investments looking more promising than the their near neighbours.

You tell him how to do it, Mr. President.


The Anchoress speaks to this crisis too, and I have my say at comment #5.

TWO RUMORS:

President Obama's speech to the troops in Afghanistan:

GREAT ~ EFFECTIVE ~ COMMANDER-IN-CHIEFLY

[or was it....]

AWFUL

Instapundit told me that the speech was being praised at National Review Online, which was, er, at odds with what I had heard. So I watched the five-minute video version (limp) and then went in deeper search for the full twenty-minute monty, and made my assessment to the delightful but misinformed Kathryn Jean Lopez. Here's my letter:

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am a double military mom, with one in the Marines (veteran of two Iraq tours) and one in the Navy (NFO training on F-18's); and my sister has one in the Navy, currently deployed on Individual Augmentation in Khost, Afghanistan. I first caught a ten-second cut of the President's speech to the troops and found it lacklustre, but my sister had seen the whole thing and gave me her take on it: AWFUL. So I looked for the video: there's the 5-minutes of edited highlights, again lacklustre, but also a distorted fraction of the full 20-minute performance.

The fact that it was 20 minutes says a lot -- that's about 12 minutes too long for cheering up the troops, and they responded as could be expected, with prolonged, deafening silence through most of it. But 20 minutes did give the President ample time to say the word "I" fifty-one times, plus variations of "me" and "my". It also allowed for seemingly endless and, in that context, weirdly extraneous references to all the civilians and politicians and members of every army not in the room, hard at work on the only aspect of the campaign that Mr. Obama appears to relate to, "international relations". Because, believe me, he does NOT relate to the troops.

It's hard to decide what was worse: was it the repeated (albeit more subtle than usual) slaps at Bush's "war of choice" in Iraq, through characterizations of this war that Mr. Obama has now chosen to adopt as his own being one with a "clear mission and the right strategy...and the equipment you need"; where America's institutions will not fail its military and we won't be "meddling in other people's business" [yeah, that happens a lot]? Or was it all the references to the "suffering...on your second or your third or your fourth tour of duty"? -- all the while oblivious to the fact that some of those in the room on their fourth tour of duty spent their earlier ones in that pointless, meddling war of choice in Iraq -- sucks to be you, guys.

No, I think the worst part was his litany of images borrowed from Tokyo Rose. I really want my kid to be sitting in a hall on the other side of the world, surrounded by evil men with bombs, listening to his president drone on about PTSD, traumatic brain injury, fighting to stand or walk again, flag-draped coffins, headstones, and a deceased comrade whose parents just received the (incorrectly named) "Medal of Honor" -- to say nothing of how much I miss my wife and children. Ooh-rah!

Robbed of his teleprompter, the President was forced to head-bob towards his text on the podium, which he did with reasonable success, but increasingly, as the minutes wore on, without heart and sometimes without sense -- his delivery broke up in strange places, and words written for emphasis got lost (though the "Tahleebahn" and "Pahkeestahn" got their customary careful enunciation). By minute 18 he looked bored.

Maybe you just have to be a military parent, mindful of how carefully you speak to your kid just before deployment, or when he or she gets to a war zone phone, or how carefully you write emails, letters, and Facebook shout-outs, always on full mental alert to sound confident and encouraging without being a Pollyanna, editing your accounts of spending time with his family back home, wondering just how many videos of his little boy at the beach or his birthday party to put on that flashdrive you're sending to Iraq, or how much to talk about that kid he graduated with whose helicopter crashed in Afghanistan and whose name is now on the college monument and his football number retired.

There has been much long-distance psychoanalysis of Mr. Obama, even by licensed professionals who have never met him, and I don't approve of that. But from my seat in the amateur section, having waved goodbye to my kid a couple of times now before his imminent deployment to Anbar, I feel more than qualified to declare that President Obama has a breathtaking empathy deficit. Additional criticisms are easy to make, based on his clear record of personal alienation from the American project, and continuing adolescent romance with the failed Socialist (hell, let's call it Communist) project. He is, as Rush has wisely put it, the least experienced and least qualified person in any room he walks into these days. That accounts for some of it. But the rank obtuseness of his speech to the troops last week is one for the books.

Looking ridiculous in his flight costume, more Club Monaco "blouson" than Bomber Command, he could not have drawn a more stark contrast between himself and that bungling Chimpy McBushHitler who had the troops shouting the roof off in Baghdad a few years ago, speaking briefly and from the heart, and giving so much heart where it was needed.

Sorry, K-Lo -- Mr. Obama looked like something, but Commander-in-Chief it was not.

Down the memory hole:

GOD BLESS THE PRO-LIFE DEMOCRATS WHO STOOD FIRM

The Stupak-pack flip made the difference --
without him and two allies,
THEY DIDN'T HAVE THE VOTES.

BART STUPAK, HEAD FOR THE SHOWERS, START WORKING ON YOUR GOLF GAME, FIND A FRIED EGG TO BE YOUR FRIEND, 'CUZ YOU ARE TOAST

Start going through the couch for loose change, America, to fund the Congressional campaign of Dan Benishek to unseat Stupak in Michigan's 1st District in November.

He Facebooks here. No donation link yet (who knew?) but he's got an address, and the checks are flying into the mail.

However, I gotta admit I'm feeling pretty good about the American people and their unwillingness to buckle under the withering contempt of their elected representatives. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, this whole ugly process has been recorded for history, and more of the folks in flyover country are better informed than they have been in generations. The fat lady ain't sung yet. And the tight-faced lady better enjoy her triumph while she can, because the pitchforks are being honed.

No Democrat with two functioning brain cells can believe that their party will not get spanked for what they have done, in the face of the clear opposition of a substantial majority of the American people. Their willingness to commit seppuku on this issue demonstrates that the party is largely constituted of hardened leftist ideologues, and served by a leadership so secure in its incumbency that it doesn't give a flying fig-newton what happens to their fellows who have to face real elections back home.

I believe they are true believers in what they have just done -- that they are so deeply and willfully ignorant of basic economics, they think all their tricks and gimmicks might actually work. [They've been sneaky about them, especially with the CBO, because to be honest is to invite the scrutiny and interference of the fools back in the constiuency -- so tiresome.] They genuinely do not see that the United States has now taken the first step down the road to being a vassal of the Chinese Communist government. What they believe instead, and desire with all their hearts, is that this massive overhaul will be paid for by "the rich", individually and corporately, thereby eliminating the existence of the rich and of the corporate entity -- a consummation devoutly to be wished. [Also, of course, a recipe for becoming a vassal of the Chinese government.]

Oh, and it will also be paid for by the decimation of the American military, thereby eliminating America's role in policing the world's fascist maniacs -- added bonus.

The President is just now shoveling the self-congratulatory sh#t so fast [about how this vote is a victory for the little people whose voice has been heard] I just have to duck. Why is he still campaigning???? Stop! Stop! STOP!!!!!!

"This is what change looks like," he just said. Remember that, folks. It's the first genuine truth he has uttered this evening.

[Michael Ramirez again -- an oldie (last July) but a goodie.]