We salute World Trade Center Memorial architect Michael Arad.

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

ALIVE DAY


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

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

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

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

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


LEST WE FORGET, OKAY?

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

Once again, we remember:

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


Never forget the sacrifice of:

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


Never forget the suffering of:

PRIVATE KRISTIAN MENCHACA
AND
PRIVATE THOMAS TUCKER


Never forget the heroism of:

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

DRAW?

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

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

NOT A DRAW

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

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

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


Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle;

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

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

What was this all for, anyway?

TEN YEARS ON

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

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

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

August 16:

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

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

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


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

WE COMMENCE A WEEK FOR REFLECTION

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

JACK LAYTON LAID SPRAYED TO REST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Really? Who knew?

He goes on:

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

Then he addresses Jack:

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

Puh-leeeeze! Chill out, kid!

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

Jack Layton, Superhero. 1950-2011.

Resting in pieces.

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

SOME YELL "FIRE!"

SOME YELL "FORE!"

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

Some Gave All, Obama Shot Par


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

BARACK OBAMA,
THIRD BLUES BROTHER

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

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

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

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

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


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
















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

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

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


MINOR AMERICAN NAVAL NOTE

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

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

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

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay tuned for more important news and views.

GASTROENTERITIS

....is just my latest excuse for not blogging much. It's been a busy time, going from two weeks at Camp Ikon, quick turnaround to Newfoundland, popped home to meet new girlfriend of #3 son, popped back to the Rock, attacked viciously by evil Virus which may or may not be connected with ordering the E-Coli special at a certain St. John's McDonald's.

Time to address more pressing events.


Remember when "WHAT A RIOT!!!" was a colloquialism describing some form of jolly and benign form of having a few laughs and a good old time?

Suddenly the globe, our home, is dotted about with way too numerous sites of genuinely vicious attacks and full-blown mass riots, with looting and arson and beatings and floods -- that is to say, floods of perfectly ridiculous sociological explanations for what drives the "youf" of today to turn so angry and hostile, and to "act out" in this dramatic, excessive (you meant EVIL shurely????) ways.

Since quite a number of these riots, and the accompanying explanatory blather, have been breaking out across the Mother Country, Merrie Olde Englande, I could not help but recall a truly stirring song written in ironic tribute to William Blake's poem/hymn to Britain, Jerusalem -- the song, first recorded on a 1994 mix CD by the artists of the No Masters independent folk label, is called Jerusalem Revisited, with its stinging lyrics penned by one of my all-time favourite songwriters (and a very nice fellow indeed, as I discovered subsequently and in person) Jim Boyes, the bass voice in the Midlands-based trio Coope Boyes and Simpson. Hear the pure and clear tone of tenor Barry Coope, with Boyes and baritone Lester Simpson joining in, making what may be the finest harmonies in modern acapella folksong happening anywhere, anytime.

Free music - Jerusalem Revisited

Now this version of Blake's hymn was written with the kindest possible classic left/Labour/socialist instinct for compassion, and it is sung with an artistry that elicits chills and tears. (I first heard it live at a tiny club in Chesterfield, when Barry was suffering a sore throat and under some stress to perform at all. But he asked us beforehand, what we, the visitors from Canada, would like to hear, and my spousal unit said "Jerusalem," he delivered it, in all its searing poignancy. It was brilliant.)

But.... here's that "but-monkey" that has the potential to slap all the compliments to hell -- I wish it weren't so. But, the more time that has passed since I first heard that song, the more I have been forced to see that the lyrics written in satire constitute a picture of the unhappy truth. At first it was just a line here or there that struck me as too true, in a way the Jim Boyes did not intend. As events have unfolded over all these years, fact has overwhelmed poetry and transformed the song into a prophetic news report rather than the twisted Tory vision that the early stanzas were meant to be. Once upon a time, I could read these lyrics and "tut-tut." Now one must read them and weep.


The first phrase that leapt out at me years ago was "...head full of jagged images/ somebody's crazy mixed-up son"........


Oh my --this post has just had a strange journey in and out of consciousness.  It showed as a "draft" in my Blogger file, which I thought was a mistake, and so I posted it.  Now I see it ends abruptly, so maybe it was an unfinished draft after all.  AGH!  The "jagged images" reference was headed towards a reflection on the agitated minds of the video game generation, which seems self-explanatory if one pays any attention to what's going on in that product line.  That's as much as I care to reflect at the moment.  Maybe another day.

Suffice to say, this was meant to be posted in the latter part of the summer of 2011.  So I'll stick it in roundabout there, and have done with it for now.

RANDOM MUSINGS FROM THE LAND OF
RANDOM PASSAGE

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

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

Back to Totally Random mode.


THINGS ARE LOOKING UP
FOR THE BRITISH MONARCHY


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

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


WHO THE HELL CAST PAUL GIAMATTI AS JOHN ADAMS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




























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













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










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

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












Hey! This is such bullsh&t!

I am a SO serious actor, babe!

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


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

ROAD TRIP!

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

Then -- pedal to the metal!!!






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



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

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

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

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

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


God bless America.

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

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

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

Transgender = no problem. Transfat = illegal.

Heh.

Getting late.

THE DAILY CALLER REPORTS:

OBAMA FLUBS ON MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT


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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OBAMA ANNOUNCES AFGHANISTAN SURRENDER
AND OFFICIAL POLICY OF ISOLATIONISM

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

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


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

5:07PM “Peace needs… a political settlement.” If I were Karzai, I’d start sleeping in a bunker. In Pakistan.

5:08PM Wow. Kabul is going to start functioning like a real national government, because Obama said it “must.” And it will do so with less support from us.

Come again?

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

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

5:10PM “The tide of war is receding.”

Churchill, he ain’t.

5:12PM “We will support those Arab revolutions by setting a nice example and saying nice things.”

5:12PM Oh good lord. It’s turned into a Model UN speech. High school Model UN, not college.

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

Seriously, at my model UN, he’d have been laughed off the stage, and we were stupid earnest back then.

5:16PM Wolf Blitzer called it “short but upbeat.”

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

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

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

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



Local News:

BEYOND HILARIOUS

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

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



What can Brown do for you?

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W - R - O - N - G.

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

[INSERT NICE PHOTO OF VIENNA HERE]

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

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

That's VINER.

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

VINER.

Got it?


Now class, review:

WEIMAR Republic

Kurt WEILL

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


WEINER

[INSERT DRAWING OF GRAPE VINES HERE]

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


m'kay?

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


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

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

WORD OF THE [MEMORIAL] DAY:

[Thanks, as ever, to Michael Ramirez.]


WE REMEMBER:

Capt. Kyle Van de Giesen, USMC

1st Lt. Jared Landaker USMC


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

...together


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

PUT IT TOGETHER, AND WHAT HAVE YOU GOT?

BIPPITY, BOPPITY, BOO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Say wha'?

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

Another money quote:

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

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

Heh.


How 'bout a little fairy dust too?




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

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

Does this guy have brass 'nads, or what?

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

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



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

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




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

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

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