I'M HERE -- YOU'RE NOT

NEENER NEENER NAH NAH



Over at AMERICAN THINKER,
they're thinkin' what I'm thinkin'

James Lewis paints the portrait of The Little President Who Wasn't There.
No kidding.

For such sheer gutless flabbiness and evasion, you have to look back to the dismal Jimmy Carter years... Barack Obama loves to preen and parade his "higher" morality. But when it comes to Iranians struggling against ugly tyranny or the people of North Korean just trying to fill their bellies with food, our little president just isn't there. Nowhere to be found. Chances are that behind the scenes the mullahs are promising Obama a glorious peace agreement that will allow him to parade his gargantuan ego around the world one more time. They are Persian rug sellers over there, who know all about hard bargaining. They've got his number: He's a pushover. Obama will trade personal glory against the freedom of Iran's people any day of the week.

The amazing, shrinking president. It is easier for the First Family to pass through the eye of a needle than for a modern Democrat to stand up for American strength and political morality in the face of exotic foreigners with flowing robes and a low tolerance for Christians and Jews.



Apparently a Soldier's Life is Cheap Now

Lance Fairchok tells a tale that the regime doesn't want you to hear: President Obama has spent his negotiating capital arranging with terrorists to free the convicted murderers of American servicemen. Didja know? Thought not.

Amthinkr links to Anne Bayefsky writing in Forbes. It's a profile of the president as weenie, weasel, weaker-than-thou, or, as Julius Caesar might have put it, "Veni,Vidi, Vici" -- pronounced in the Classical mode as "Weenie, Weedy, Weaky". Ah yes, Julius Caesar -- I've thought of him so often in relation to the Obamessiah over the past six months. Let's see... According to Cassius:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.

Can we spot the parallels? YES WE CAN.

Is there anything more to be said? Nope.

Meanwhile, over at Doctor Plumbeo's Emergency Room, I weigh in on some Canadian health care tales.

WHO AM I?

Just when things have gone quiet enough that informed people may have forgotten how preternaturally stupid California Senator Barbara Boxer is, she goes out of her way to remind us, waving the neon orange flag of her clueless irrelevance for permanent memorial in the public archive. Her recent exchange with a man who has actually done something with his life:



CLUE, Senator Boxtop: For the American military man, the proper honorific towards any female to whom he feels bound to show the maximum respect accorded to ranks above his pay grade (whether they deserve it or not) is "Ma'am". He can't get any more respectful than that, just as he would be bound to say "Sir" to any higher ranking officer all the way up to the Commander-in-Chief. "Ma'am" would be his required form of address to the first female president when that shall be the case [and it won't be you, Madam Senator]. In military parlance, "Senator" is really so specific as to be a downgrade from the generic "Ma'am".

In fact, Senator Boxwood, "Ma'am" is good enough for the Queen of England. I believe the protocol is that you address her as "Your Majesty" the first time, and then "Ma'am" is proper for any subsequent exchanges. You should have been more than happy with "Ma'am", Senator Shoebox -- "Your Majesty" ain't happenin' in this lifetime. Not even for Michelle.

Madam Senator's public non-event caught the eye of Toronto's National Post journo-chatterer Marni Soupcoff, who also notes in passing the Senate resolution introduced by those two Mensa-ready doyennes of Calipornia politics, Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, congratulating the Los Angeles Lakers on taking the NBA title. Soupcoff wonders aloud what the proper mode of respectful address would be for winning coach and basketball genius Phil Jackson? She answers her own question:

Unlike Boxer, he's probably too spiritually grounded to mistake the issue for one that holds any importance whatsoever.

Yeah. what she said.

Senator Boxer gesticulates to describe the size of her IQ:


Everybody squint.

Rarely have so many risen to such heights on so little talent and merit and wreaked such havoc on the lives of more than few.

VACUUMS I HAVE KNOWN

There's been a vacuum in my blogstream for more than a week. I'm just days from lift-off to Newfoundland for more than 5 weeks, so am eyeball-high in preparations for the August wedding of #2 son, which must be completed before I leave.

And am still slogging my way through a less-than-sterling experience of trying to direct bits of Julius Caesar with 12&13-year-olds, also coming to completion, if you can call it that, this week (one week late). Never wanted to do J.C. -- will never do it again. Too late smart.

There's also been a vacuum in my upstairs toilet for several days, after my attempt to save money by replacing old parts myself. That all appeared to go well until I turned the water back on and it said, "No, I don't think I'll be filling up that tank any time soon." Plumber arrives tomorrow.

Finally, I discover there's been a vacuum in my television viewing, since I missed all of Operation Iraqi Stephen on this past week's Colbert Report -- had to catch it all online in miniature.

Memo to the world: Watch all four shows. Watch the four "B-roll" clips on YouTube. Buy the video when it comes out (as it no doubt shall). And give a hearty tip-of-the-hat and OOH-RAH to Colbert for his brilliant gift to all the deserving folks in uniform.

This bit worked well -- and showed a level of commitment rarely matched.



[Try to ignore the self-serving schlobber between Matt Lauer and some newsdoll afterward. Colbert is check/checkmate on this one.]

I enjoyed the shows so much I didn't even hurl when the Apologizer-in-Chief used the phrase "wants to play soldier" -- coming from him that was painful. We're still waiting for him to play President -- maybe by standing up for our allies in Israel, our potential allies on the streets of Iran, and our newest allies in Iraq (notice how Iraq was MIA in The One's recent pronoucements about hope for democracy in the Middle East? -- pathetic).

Instead, Obama has embarrassed himself by schlobbering on about "robust debate" leading to the Iranian election.

Here's a voter who had a robust debate with a government storm-trooper.

And here are just a few folks in Tehran who have the impression that one side of the "robust debate" went unheard. Some tea party, huh?

Of course, the MSM had little to contribute beyond strained comparisons with Bush/Gore 2000.

Oh yeah -- I remember people being shot in the streets of Florida like it was yesterday......

Welcome to my morning. It's Saturday, and I just boiled over.

I've had it with this smarmy yet ice-cold, fraudulent, loathesome political whore who is our President.

Had it. Had it.

Probably ought to bite my tongue. Sometimes other tongues do it better.

Start with the Anchoress, who calls it with her usual poignard-laced prose:

Evan Thomas, that bellweather of media obsequiousness, who once (accurately) predicted that the Democrat-loving press would give John Kerry “10 to 15% points” in his race for the White House, has declared that President Obama is “sort of god”. Chris Matthews, who would suckle Obama’s manboobs, if only Obama would lactate for him, can be heard saying “yeah,” in the background...

I don’t blame Obama for this. I blame an industry that has so insulated itself and is so lacking in diversity of thought or perspective that it has become an obscene parody of what the craft of journalism was meant to be. And I blame us, for allowing them to get away with it for so long that they could reach this point.

Bend an ear to this:



Then go here:

It's Take Your Daddy to Class Day -- whether you know it or not --
Master Sergeant Joe Myers drops in on his daughter's classroom [new link] , after a YEAR in Iraq.

THIS, Mr. Obama, is real SACRIFICE, not that bull-roar you pontificate about when you advertise your total economic incompetence as you announce more plant closings and corporate drownings. Remember?: the sacrifice nobody "chose" but were "called to." THIS, Mr. Obama, is sacrifice that people chose. And all you can do is call it getting "sidetracked" in a "war of choice" for which you have just apologized to the one of the most shallow, bloodthirsty, philosophically and morally perverted cultures ever to victimize their neighbours for more than a millennium.

And if you don't laugh, you have to cry. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gaffes it on D-Day because -- well, just because. I mean, breathes there a man with soul so dead that The One has not taken possession of his head?

Moving on to Sunday.

We must remember this:
A Fisk is just a Fisk

ROBERT "ADEODATUS" [gift from God] SPENCER
DOES A SUPERB FISKING OF THE ENTIRE
OBAMARATHON STATE-OF-THE-UTOPIA SPEECH
TO THE EAGERLY AWAITING MUSLIM WORLD

I did it -- I read the whole revolting thing, and would never have survived it without the Righteous Fisking by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch. I was especially pleased with his debunking of the conventional mythos of the cultural superiority of Al-Andalus. How sick are we of this particular piece of potted history tripe?

What Spencer missed was picked up elsewhere, with massive Fisking going on at Jihad Watch main page, and also reported by in indispensable Gateway Pundit, and the equally indispensable and always scholarly Victor Davis Hanson harnasses that vein that's been throbbing in his head in recent months to instruct our woefully undereducated President about some pivotal historical realities.

It's all there in glorious living black and white. Read it and weep -- might as well get in the habit of weeping because it's only going to get worse.

Memo to the 53% -- the trolls who voted for this creep: he is everything your right-wing enemies accused him of, EVERYTHING, and you will rue the day you closed your eyes, ripped your bodice, and gasped "take me." So will the rest of us, who are not responsible for the dismantling of two and half centuries of American progress.

I think it's a good look for him, don't you? ===>

QUESTION: WHY DID BRIAN WILLIAMS
BOW TO THE PRESIDENT?



ANSWER: BECAUSE IF HE'D BEEN ON HIS KNEES KISSING ASS, HIS HEAD WOULD HAVE BEEN OUT OF THE SHOT.

But seriously, folks, I think Williams was just trying to teach the fools of America that this is a perfectly natural custom in the United States, which is, as we recently learned, one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.

As Mort Sahl once asked, "Is anyone ill yet?"

Me, I'm pretty sick of this stuff.

TILLER THE BABY-KILLER
GUNNED DOWN IN CHURCH

Now there's a headline for the ages.

I wish Dr. George Tiller had not been gunned down, anywhere. It doesn't change the fact that he was a baby-killer, a regular practitioner of the most grisly and barbaric form of abortion on the late-term viable unborn baby (for a healthy fee of five grand). But killing him is counter-productive, to say the least.

I'm slightly at a loss for words about this, which is good because I'd probably find the wrong ones. Robert Stacy ("The Other") McCain speaks well at this difficult moment:

Sometimes, when the stubborn wickedness of a people offends God, the Almighty withholds His divine protection, permitting those sinners to have their own way, following the road to destruction so that they are subjected to evil rulers and unjust laws. Never, however, does the wise and faithful Christian resort to the kind of lawlessness practiced with such cruelty today in Kansas.

One reason I so despise such criminal idiocy is that, as a student of history, I cannot think of a single instance in which assassination has produced anything good, no matter how evil or misguided the victim, nor how well-intentioned or malevolent the assassin.

From Brutus and the other republican Senators who slew Julius Caesar to Charlotte Corday, from John Wilkes Booth to Gavrilo Princip, and so onto Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray, assassination seems inevitably to work against the purposes of its practitioners.

Those who slew Caesar did not save the Roman republic. Marat's death only incited the Jacobins to greater terror. Booth's pistol conjured up a spirit of vengeance against the South more terrible than war itself. Assassination is an act of nihilism. Whatever the motive of the crime, the horror it evokes always inspires a draconian response, and involves other consequences never intended by the criminal.

The alleged assailant, Scott Roeder, is about as "typical" a pro-life advocate as the the Reverend Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church brood are typical Christian believers. I guess it's fitting that the Phelps clan wasted no time in showing up to support the murderer. They deserve each other.

Roeder began his career as a nutjob by joining up with the "Freemen" movement, an anti-government anti-tax cult that instructs poor dupes how to declare themselves "sovereign men" so they can dodge their taxes and legitimate creditors. (Hard to find a link to this bunch that isn't completely suspect.) He was also charged with possession of bomb-making materials, but acquitted due to procedural irregularities on the search -- according to his ex-wife this just made him more self-righteous.

So in other words, whatever flirtation he may have had with mainstream pro-life groups, he is one of those people who has always been of no use whatsoever, unwilling to do the kind of hard-slagging shoe-leather work that stays within the law and tries to change minds. It appears that stewing away in his little rage-bubble in the end proved unsatisfactory, and it appears that when he finally lifted a finger it was wrapped around a fire-arm. Lazy sod.

So in one blast of a gun, a murderer has shot the legs out from under every reasoned argument and every reasonable person who deplores abortion and works for the day that every child will be welcomed in life and protected by law.

Thank you so much, idiot.

Dr. Tiller joins the very short list of abortionists who have been killed for their profession. This list remains an infinitessimal fraction of the number of abortionists killed on episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent and in other television and film fantasies regularly conjured up by the artistic supporters of "a woman's right to choose."

And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that.


FLOTUS: NO CHEAP DATE

President Obama and wife Michelle did a quick hop down to The Big Apple to catch a Broadway show, then back home again the same night. Needless to say, it cost more than that similar jaunt taken by Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown to Havana, in Broadway's timeless "Guys and Dolls". Cost estimates have run anywhere from $24,000 (Ha! are you kidding me?) to 75,000 pounds to $250,000 (at least, I'm bettin').

Now, as the mother of a certain Marine who flew a 100-foot helicopter from California to Wyoming, as part of a Normandy-style landing operation to facilitate Dick Cheney playing a round of golf during the last administration, I have no illusions about what it costs for the President to go anywhere safely for any purpose, and Lord knows we don't expect him to live like a monk while he's in office.

Or do we? At least we can say for sure that Cheney did not follow any of his well-escorted vacations with a speech scolding the American public into regarding the prospect of their personal economic train-wreck as a "sacrifice" they are "called to make." (Very Biblical language for describing the Obamandated downhill slide on the poverty wagon -- appropriate enough, I guess, considering the Divine Source.)

So normally I wouldn't give the cost of a Presidential date-night a second thought. But I'd be pretty surprised if any president in my memory ever did something similar -- that is, the drive-by drop-in for totally private entertainment purposes, to another city in another state, and home again that night -- on the public buck. We've had some jet-set presidents who would be quite comfortable doing such things, but usually for fund-raisers or some public event, and likely coupled with some sort of official business. Other presidents (the Bushes come to mind) would not have been temperamentally inclined to this brand of rather decadent jetting about for private fun. If that's another way of saying they were dull homebodies, I won't argue.

But whatever their personal habits, most of them lacked the rare kind of gall it takes to run for president on promises of exceptional purity, preach sacrifice, enforce hardship, and live like a frickin' sultan.

All that without bothering to put on a tie.

I don't know about Michelle, but when I get all duded up I do NOT want to be escorted by a guy in an unbuttoned shirt. As usual, Michelle managed to screw up an otherwise good-looking ensemble with something inexplicable, in this case an electric blue clutch purse. But at least she had a "finished" look, complete with sparkly jewels. So POTUS, put on a damn tie. FLOTUS should have kicked your butt.

This is the first time I've ever heard the First Lady referred to as "FLOTUS", which is only logical but somehow still funny. It's probably just me -- the word is too reminiscent of my first childbirth confinement, when the Last Nurse in the Nation to bother with wearing a little white cap and using proper technical terms kept asking me if I had passed any "flatus." She was actually a nice break from the presumptuous informality of her [our] generation, and I should never have referred to her as "Nurse Snippet."


A LITTLE CONFECTION FOR CATHOLICS
SUFFERING FROM BAD MUSIC:

A recent extended (as they always are) conversation with my niece and namesake yielded some fun concepts for those of us who subscribe to the credo of those folks over at the now defunct Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas. Here's my contribution:


GUARANTEED TO SOUR YOUR SUNDAE!!

IT'S BLAND!

IT'S FRUITY!

IT'S OOZING WITH SACCHARINE!!!



It's shot through and through
with gobs of heretical goo,
and topped with candy-coated NUTS --

THE ULTIMATE INDULGENCE!

Discover why Moses wandered for 40 years lost in the DESSERT!!

Haugen-Haas -- More dangerous than Ben and Jerry's.
Gum up your vocal chords, and go for it.

I'M NOT A WORLD LEADER WHO
LIVED THROUGH WORLD WAR II,

BUT I CAN PLAY ONE ON TV


The French Horn, the Scotch Egg, and the Obamessiah (who will pay tribute to the Sauer Krauts) are all primed to pose and ponder at the next June 6 commemoration of the D-Day landings -- the beginning of the end for the Nazis and the the beginning of rebirth for occupied Europe (ahem, you're welcome) -- but none of them thought to invite the reigning Queen of England, the only one among them who remembers being bombed and wearing trousers for her country.

The three Euro-Mouseketeers put the "NO GURLZ" sign on their clubhouse, and had planned to spend Da Day together, cultivating their warm personal working relationship ("...loves red wine, band music, and long walks on the beach.....").

Now they find out that the Old Girl is royally cheesed that no arrangements and no apparent consideration at all had been aimed in her direction regarding her rightful place in the reviewing stand. Step aside, Granny, the Young Lions are in charge now ("Oh I just can't wait to be king!") -- and they want to party like its 1968 at the Sorbonne. Might as well do it while they can -- in not too many D-Days from now they are likely to be called to attention by the local muezzin.

What, no room for HRM? Can't squeeze her in, between the statesmen? Let's see....




Pretty tight there...












OOPS! Wouldn't want to intrude there!









Looks pretty Sar-Cozy... Awkward!


Who let Laughing-Boy in?



Oh, naff off, the pack of you.

I'll still be Queen when you're all off having your self-justifying autobiographies ghost-written. (Again, in some cases.)


Not amused. Ipod or no ipod.

OVER AT MY ALTER-EGO BLOG:

News round-up at SUMMA CONTRA IMPROBOS ET PLUMBEOS

Among the headlines:

Separated at birth -- Roseanne Barr & Sonia Sotomayor:















Hat-tip: Dennis Miller
"Roseanne Bar-Exam"

MEMORIAL DAY, U.S.A.

Day is done, gone the sun, but I'll make my contribution anyway. This morning I went to the weekly Mass I arranged to be said for my son and family during his deployments, and found a prayer in my missal that I'd never seen before. It was found tucked away on the body of Lt. Andre Zirnheld of the British S.A.S. (professor of philosophy in his civilian life) when he was killed in Libya in 1941.

Civilians will take note, and perhaps be surprised. Soldiers will know exactly what it's all about:


I bring this prayer to You, Lord,
For You alone can give
What one cannot demand from oneself.
Give me, Lord, what You have left over,
Give me what no one ever asks You for.
I don't ask You for rest,
Or quiet,
Whether of soul or body;
I don't ask You for wealth,
Nor for success, nor even health perhaps.
That sort of thing You get asked for so much
That You can't have any of it left.
Give me, Lord, what you have left over,
Give me what no one wants from You.
I want insecurity, strife,
And I want You to give me these
Once and for all.
So that I can be sure of having them always,
Since I shall not always have the courage
To ask You for them.
Give me, Lord, what You have left over,
Give me what others want nothing to do with.
But give me courage too,
And strength and faith;
For You alone can give
What one cannot demand from oneself.


Dear Mr. President, and representatives all:

PLEASE, can you manage not to ADD to his burden?

YOU GOTTA LAUGH, or you'll cry....

THE FILM THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE!!!!



Coming soon, to a gas pump, WalMart, Piggly Wiggly, Macy's, and (gasp!) Amazon.com near YOU!!!

OBAMA TO ROOSEVELT:
"I WANNA BE JUST LIKE YOU WHEN I GROW UP"

Maybe we can start with
INTERNMENT CAMPS


[Check it out -- New York Times, PAGE 18]

In his continuing effort to out-Janus Janus, President Obama prepared for his national security speech about the evils of the Gitmo by revealing, in an off-the-record meeting with human rights advocates, that he may propose legal changes which would enable the United States to hold in "preventive detention" people suspected of contemplating acts of terrorism -- people who have done nothing yet, and who could not be convicted of any crime, but who have manifested behaviors of potential terrorists, being held in prison to keep them from carrying out what we think they were thinking about doing.

Been there -- done that: 1942-46


Chains we can believe in?


And then there was....

FUN WITH DICK AND JANE

The American Enterprise Institute hosted Darth Cheney himself, delivering a speech on national security which Atlas Shrugs calls "the definition of common sense" and "required reading."

So do as you're told and read it.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Obambi delivered his own speech defending his rather sissy approach to national security.

It was the tag-team event of the year, and the guy with the droopy lip seems to have come out on top.


So, see it this way:












Or this way:


But SEE it. It's not going away.

Nice work, Dick. Where were you for eight years?????

BAD CASE OF THE [SOUTH]BENDS

OBAMA DOES THE DAME



The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN, was treated to the rare privilege of a commencement address delivered by the President of the United States. It was also treated to the not-at-all rare experience of a commencement address consisting of tiresome pap about finding common ground among people of diametrically opposed world views, blah blah blah. It's hard to say what's more offensive: Obama's thoroughly inappropriate presence on the podium of a Catholic institution of higher education, the anticlimactic banality of his words, or the rank vulgarity of his opening "softening up" paragraphs as he once again displayed his total lack of taste and talent in the field of light comedy, especially as he tries to make light of things that are just not funny.

It was a performance not so far removed from his recent lame-o appearance at the annual Washington correspondents' dinner, where he had the good fortune to be followed by the Wanda Sykes act which so surpassed him for crass mean-spiritedness that most people forgot how crappy the President's own "set" had been -- how many pained silences and occasional thuds and groans had greeted his attempts to make light of serious issues and problems, from the "Scare Force One" disaster over Manhattan, to death from Mexican flu, to the shameful persecution of Larry Summers at Harvard, to the terminal idiocy of his chosen Vice President.

At Notre Dame Mr. Obama delivered in many respects exactly the kind of speech one would anticipate from such a person [and the world is full of them]: one who has absolutely no concept of what it means to have a deep-seated, irrevocable moral conviction grounded in the dictates of an eternal and unchanging God. This is why there is never any need for any Catholic institution to hand a microphone to this sort of speaker -- there are far too many accomplished and brilliant Catholic scholars and leaders (really, there are!), living examples of fidelity, for a school to waste its commencement address on someone who doesn't speak the same language the students do (or SHOULD DO, after four years in a Catholic college) on matters of the greatest importance to their lives, to the future of human existence, and to life in the world to come.

It is hard even to be offended by Mr. Obama's self-serving analysis of the dangers and challenges that lie before this graduating class, made worse by the massive the burdens he himself has laid upon their futures in a mere 100 days of national deconstruction. Nor by the recitation of leftist talking points about climate change, diversity, greed, yada yada yada. Nor even by his obtuse referencing of "cultural divides" regarding stem cell research or AIDS, or the perverse bromide about how "faith necessitates doubt" [excuse me?].

And he can be forgiven for holding up the execrable Cardinal Bernardin as an example of moral leadership, since in this he is no different from far too many Catholics -- that scandal is on their heads rather than Obama's. Sadly, it is not so difficult to imagine how a "faith journey" that leads past Bernardin can wind up in the pews of Jeremiah Wright (though Obama carefully avoided mentioning that this was his resting place when he was "brought to Christ").

No, none of these irritations constitute the most offensive elements of President Obama's performance today under the Golden Dome of Our Lady. What offends most is that, having persevered in keeping an engagement that would be a source of controversy and division among adherents to a faith he does not share, he thought he could joke his way around the gravity of the situation, with a crass and clueless riff on the previous controversial address at a Catholic college [Xavier] which declined to award him an honorary degree. And that he could paper over the deep moral divide between his very clear record (furthering the deliberate termination of innocent but inconvenient life both before and after birth), and the doctrine of the Catholic Church on the sanctity of human life, by giving lip service to support for adoption, childcare, and contraception ("reducing unintended pregancies") -- as if this makes his record less of an outrage.

What offends is the bald-faced lie that Mr. Obama actually desires "common ground" -- that he has any intention of "honoring the conscience" of those who disagree with the received leftist position on the "right to choose." With a straight face he spoke of the desirability of "vigorous debate", in hopes that "surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature." Then, about half a dozen paragraphs down, the students are warned that, "You will hear talking heads scream on cable..." Are these "Fair-minded words" or reduction to caricature, Mr. President?

The greatest offense in this whole affair -- it goes without saying but let's keep saying it anyway -- has been the conduct of Fr. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame (at least until tomorrow morning), which has gotten more petulant and abrasive with every development in the story. He topped it all off with his sycophantic Kumbayah introduction of the interloper at today's commencement. Too obtuse himself to recognize what a strategically advantageous move it was for Obama to, literally, don the mantle of Notre Dame for a day, Fr. Jenkins actually congratulated the President for accepting his invitation to speak, as if it required a thimbleful of courage. On the contrary -- having garnered more than half the Catholic vote last November, Obama's appearance increased the comfort level of Catholic voters with their choice, in case his immediate pro-abortion policy decisions might have made them a little dubious.

Fr. Jenkins was especially memorable as he praised Obama for not being "someone who stops talking to those who disagree with him." This was specific to the issue of abortion -- as if Notre Dame should feel grateful that the Great One deigned to appear under these unsavoury circumstances.

Let's re-cap, Father: This is the same Obama who, in his first meeting with Republican leaders in Washington, slammed the lid on discussions of compromise by trumpeting, "I WON", and told a fellow Democrat who couldn't support his stimulus plan that he was "KEEPING SCORE." [links here] It's not so much that Mr. Obama doesn't stop talking, it's that he wants those who disagree with him to stop talking, period -- just ask Hannity and Limbaugh.

Ever since the advent of candidate John F. Kennedy in 1960, it's been a dark sort of entertainment to watch unworldly Catholic priests and religious weigh in on political matters, too often showing themselves to be at least babes in the woods -- the sad part of the last 10 or 15 years has been watching them willingly throw Catholic principles under the campaign bus in their continuing quest to look relevant and modern. At least l'affaire Notre Dame has also been an occasion for the greater public to see uncharacteristically faithful leadership from six dozen bishops, resistence from substantial numbers of students and (to a lesser degree) faculty, and 350,000 signatures on a petition to halt the travesty which proceeded this afternoon. This follows on some equally powerful counter-witness during the fall elections regarding apostate Catholic politicians who would try to remake the Church in their own image. Let us pray that this is a sign of a corner turned in American Church-state relations, with a fresh font of faith bubbling up from below among the John Paul II generation.

Cheer, cheer for New Notre Dame?

WHERE HAS ALL THE BLOGGING GONE.......?

Answer is simple: we're in San Diego visiting the Sprout and his Mom, and it's just

ALL THOMAS, ALL THE TIME.







Well, almost all the time.

Lest those of us who think General Petraeus walks on water be accused of being a bit over the top......

MULTIPLE HANKY ALERT!!!!!

[hat-tip Gateway Pundit]

COMING TO A SUPERMARKET NEAR YOU????

Brown shirts are just so-o-o last-century -- green is the new brown. Pack a double-whammy with your eco-friendly Islamo-sacred green Tee's that say to everyone, "Hey, I support all things biodegradable -- especially vaporized Jews."

Watch as sworn enemies of Israel swarm a French suburban supermarket and strip the shelves of all Israeli products. Watch as their fellow-shoppers, intimidated or brain-dead as they may be, go about their own business as usual. Watch as store management is nowhere to be seen while the green-shirts fill their baskets and then appear to walk out of the store unimpeded with loads of shop-lifted merchandise.

Is anybody in charge of anything over there?




Think twice before you reach for those matzohs.


MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE NATION OF NICENESS....

Back in the sane and civilized Great White North, yet another HONOUR KILLING trial is underway in Ottawa, capitol of Nice. 23-year-old Afghan-Canadian (in Canada since childhood) shot his sister and her fiance as they sat in a parked car, with a .44 magnum he hadn't intended to bring along -- looking for a "manslaughter" verdict because, like all upstanding Muslim sororcides, he was "provoked" by his disapproval of the sister's engagement, based on his "profound attachment" to his heritage. Not to mention his belief that he would make his sister a martyr who would go to paradise.

Nice. Not the first of these in the Nation of Niceness -- won't be the last, either, safe to assume.

"WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER."

That's what the irreplaceable Gateway Pundit had to say last week, and I can't argue -- and neither can the week's polls which give the Messiah-Prez and his hapless Veep a 110-day "F" grade, coming in at lower popularity than their predecessors at the 100-day milestone mark. The disasters have been coming on faster and more furious than that old Journey to the Center of the Earth movie (1959 starring Pat Boone and a giant Geiko gekko).

Over at my alter-ego, the Probing Plumber [Summa Contra Improbos et Plumbeos], we celebrate the 100-day anniversary from our perch in the emergency ward: I weigh in on Swine Flu and Cancer (metaphor for Islamofascism) and the Kindly Doctor Plumb covers Cancer as metaphor for Liberalism.

This just in: the New York Times calls Pennsylvania Pork-Pusher Congressman John Murtha ("D" for Disgrace to the Marine Corps) a "heavyweight" -- only partly due to his decades-long accumulation of power through fund-funneling. Heh. And -- believe it or don't -- ABC News does a profile/hit-piece on Murtha's eponymous Potemkin Village vanity airport, as reported by Instapundit. Couldn't happen to a nicer lying S.O.B.




Vis-a-vis the diurnal "century" mark, I was thinking something along the lines of

MOST CATASTROPHICALLY DESTRUCTIVE HUNDRED DAYS OF ANY PRESIDENCY IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC

-- not to put too fine a point on it. Certainly the most catastrophic FIRST hundred days, but I might even argue for any 100-day period ever. I mean, of course, self-generated, deliberate catastrophe, destructive of the nearly every institution by which America has defined itself for 233 years: free enterprise, free market, free speech, free exercise of religion, freedom from foreign interference/domination, free and fair elections, and a strong military to defend those freedoms. Did I miss anything? It's all under assault to one degree or another, by the deliberate implementation of a radical socialist agenda by a cold-blooded ideologue.

That cold-blooded part has really come home to me during the recent apology tour. Only a man of ice-blue personal narcissism but national self-loathing could have conducted this global penitential exercise in the name of a country and a people who, he must know, have not all, not even a slim majority, signed on to his all-out campaign to cut American arrogance down to size. The American voter has never been privy to Mr. Obama's academic record at any level of his long and generously subsidized education -- but I suspect what he is spewing forth these days is the kind of regurgitated agitprop that would have gained him an A+ in his poly-sci classes. Perhaps there are faculty heroes and mentors from his past that he is still trying to please. I wish he would polish his apples on somebody else's time.

"Treason" is a white-hot term to throw around, and has come too easily to the lips of political activists in the past decade. I've used it myself, but not without serious deliberation, in the direction of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Kerry, and a few of their colleagues, for specific acts and pronouncements done in the course of their congressional duties -- and I stand by the words. "Treason" was cried against certain organs of journalism, most notably the New York Times, for specific acts of leaking classified information which threatened national security -- and the shoe still fits, perfectly.

I am now prepared to use that word to describe the President's publication of intelligence memos which reveal, in detail, the methods and limits of interrogation techniques to be used on imprisoned terrorists -- a publication, let it be noted, that was done AGAINST THE ADVICE OF FOUR FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISORS, AND OBAMA'S OWN SITTING DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE, the certifiably liberal partisan Leon Panetta.

This has been Mr. Obama's COLDEST ideological act in a long line of cold acts, in a very short frame of time. And to what end? Nothing more, I contend, than for him to solidify for the history books his own sense of rigid, almost Puritanical moral superiority. And who's he superior to? All the rest of us, friends -- so much so that our ally across the pond, Gerald Warner at England's Daily Telegraph ponders the musical question, "Why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?" Good question dude. And Prez P/W is NOT alone. Money quotes:

If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers.

I would have thought you'd have to go a long, long way, and have occupied the seat of power for some considerable time, before you could come near to eclipsing Jimmy Carter as the worst president of the past hundred years. Mr. Obama has bull-dozed his way into the record books poised to do exactly that, and to do it in less than a hundred days. This is a dangerous man -- dangerously ignorant, arrogant, tunnel-visioned, self-absorbed, and cold, cold, COLD man.

There is only one way to head off the disaster that four years of Obama represents, and that is to vote for any Republican with a pulse in 2010. The American nation is on the brink of losing itself, and only the free exercise of the ballot box can save it.

Most shocking VICTIMS OF OBAMA'S 100 DAYS of God-damn Amerikka:

the poor minority children from Washington D.C., who might have slipped through a cracked (and crack-infested) window, out of the cycle of unchanging hopelessness and into educational discipline and self-propelled ambition. Instead, their voucher/scholarship program has been canned by the compassionate, minority-loving Democrats, as part of their non-stop pandering to the NEA -- that's the teachers, folks, those job-secured, well-pensioned people at the National Education Association (No Equal-opportunity African-Americans, thank you!!!).
Hello change, good-bye hope.

One among that rare species, the Rational Liberal, Juan Williams reads the riot act to his President about this gross injustice to innocent children who have had their futures compromised in the name of naked political self-interest, Obama's Outrageous Sin Against Our Kids.


[hat-tip/ Flypaper]


LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

CHENEY REDUX?

Daughter Liz Cheney, who quietly held some position in the Bush administration, of which I was unaware, obviously did her homework and honed her skills. She turns in a killer interview performance with some pushy dame at CNN (not as bad as the Roesgen chick, but obnoxious and partisan enough for the I-AM-the-news Reporter Club.) PowerLine picks up the theme: Cheney in 2012?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

[updated**]
PICTURE YOU UPON MY KNEE --
JUST TEA FOR TWO, AND TWO FOR

TEA

Tomorrow is Tax Day, and as someone who made less than a thousand bucks last year, let me be the first to say that I'm going to be filing late because i decided to do it myself and it's damned complicated.

But don't let that stop anybody from hitting the bricks and rallying for the preservation of the American identity at one of the hundreds of Tax Day Tea Parties happening later today (since it's after midnight) -- because nothing less than the American identity is what's at stake in these troubling days. Like the man said:

But do it with a light heart and a confident air, of course! 'Cause that's what right-winged crazy eagle-birds do. Leave anger, defeatism, and the politics of personal destruction to those who do it best: the Kos Kids and willing accomplices in the adult Democrat community. Teach the tantrum-throwing anarchists what real Community Organizing -- the kind with results -- actually looks like. Good luck to ya, Tea-baggers.** Wish I could be there. Have a cuppa Liberty Leaves for me.

And sing along [a-one, and a-two]:

** It's always nice to know, after all the years of my ever-diminishing life, that I can still be shocked or at least ignorant of what others find shocking. I am given to understand that to use the term "tea-bag" in its verb form is to indulge in a sexual vulgarity of a grotesque and rather deviant, albeit SO-O-O adolescent, sort. The Kos Kidz and the MSNBC crowd are enjoying themselves no end, having been handed such an easy opportunity by the right-wing family values crowd to make naughty word-plays. Oh, oh, oh -- pee, po, belly, bum, drawers.

Begging the readership's pardon for the unwitting faux pas.