A SHORT VACATION BUT A LONG, HOT SUMMER:

THE AMAZING WILTING PRESIDENT

Fouad Ajami at the Wall Street Journal lays out a withering assessment of the Great Obamatron Disenchantment now in progress, among the massed voting blocks slowly recovering from their temporary insanity of last fall. Money quotes:

In one of the revealing moments of the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama rightly observed that the Reagan presidency was a transformational presidency in a way Clinton's wasn't…

The failure of the Carter years was, in Reagan's view, the failure of the man at the helm and the policies he had pursued at home and abroad. At no time had Ronald Reagan believed that the American covenant had failed, that should apologize for itself in the world beyond its shores. There was no narcissism in Reagan…

In contrast, there is joylessness in Mr. Obama. He is a scold, the "Yes we can!" mantra is shallow, and at any rate, it is about the coming to power of a man, and a political class, invested in its own sense of smarts and wisdom, and its right to alter the social contract of the land. In this view, the country had lost its way and the new leader and the political class arrayed around him will bring it back to the right path.

Thus the moment of crisis would become an opportunity to push through a political economy of redistribution and a foreign policy of American penance…

Sssss-s-s-s-s-s-s-s

IN A SIMILAR VAIN:

Chris Stirewalt at The Washington Examiner declares the bloom to be off the romance of the rose between the slobbering press and the insufferable vanitas of the Obama machine.

[hat-tips both: Instapundit]


TREND-SPOTTING:

THE RETURN OF 'HIPPIE SH*T'

This is actually last winter's story, since I first noticed it when shopping in Houston over Christmas: the very, very depressing return of fashion merchandise based on what we blithely categorize as 'hippie sh*t'. What would be best consigned, unlamented and unremembered, to the dustbin, trash heap, rubbish tip, dumpster of history -- the love beads, the fringe vests, the embroidered jeans, the tie-dyed tees, the sprinkle of hot-pink daisies, the haze of doobie-smoke -- is once again fashionable, being marketed from Walmart to Filene's.

At the time I credited this immediately to the coming of the Obamessiah -- and patted myself on the head for the prescience of my post of October '08, about the 'new' White House decor we could look forward to:


Now it's everywhere. So it was hardly surprising to learn [upon discovering that my Newfoundland rental car had Sirius satellite radio, including an all-Broadway network] that there had been a hugely successful 2009 revival of that profound study of late 20th-century social reality, HAIR -- the American tribal love-rock musical -- the navel-gazing, free-loving, peacenikety, draft-card-immolating blasphemenomenon of 1965.

If, like me, your only exposure to the complete work in performance was the Milos Forman film of 1979, here are some scenes you missed, according to the Wikipedia synopsis of the original script:

Berger gives a joint to Claude that is laced with a hallucinogen. Claude starts to trip as the tribe acts out his visions ("Walking in Space"). He hallucinates that he is skydiving from a plane into the jungles of Vietnam. Berger appears as General George Washington and is told to retreat because of an Indian attack. The Indians shoot all of Washington's men. General Ulysses S. Grant appears and begins a roll call: Abraham Lincoln (played by a black female tribe member), John Wilkes Booth, Calvin Coolidge, Clark Gable, Scarlett O'Hara, Aretha Franklin, George Custer.

Claude Bukowski is called in the roll call, but Clark Gable says "he couldn't make it". They all dance a minuet until three African witch doctors kill them – all except for Abraham Lincoln who says, "I'm one of you". Lincoln, after the three Africans sing his praises, recites an alternate version of the Gettysburg Address ("Abie Baby"). Booth shoots Lincoln, but says to him, "I ain't dying for no white man".

As the visions continue, four Buddhist monks enter. One monk pours a can of gasoline over another monk, who is set afire (reminiscent of the self-immolation of Tri Quang Duc) and runs off screaming. Three Catholic nuns strangle the three remaining Buddhist monks. Three astronauts shoot the nuns with ray guns. Three Chinese people stab the astronauts with knives. Three Native Americans kill the Chinese with bows and tomahawks. Three green berets kill the Native Americans with machine guns and then kill each other.

A Sergeant and two parents appear holding up a suit on a hanger. The parents talk to the suit as if it is their son and they are very proud of him. The bodies rise and play like children. The play escalates to violence until they are all dead again. They rise again ("Three Five Zero Zero") and, at the end of the trip sequence, two tribe members sing, over the dead bodies, a melody set to a lyric about the nobility of Man ("What A Piece of Work Is Man").

EX-SQUEEZE ME? Could anybody but a Bill Ayers type feel nostalgic about this twaddle?

["Gimme a head with hair/ Long beautiful hair/ Shinin', gleamin', streamin', flaxen, waxen"/ Put it on an empty head/ Hangin' in vacant eyes/ Here baby, there mama / no problem so big it can't be solved by explosives............]







Ahem.

Some comments about the "themes" in Hair, from the Wiki-tooters:

Religion appears both overtly and symbolically throughout the piece, and it is often made the brunt of a joke. Berger sings of looking for "Donna", which takes on the double meaning of the woman he's searching for and the Madonna. During "Sodomy", a hymn-like paean to all that is "dirty" about sex, the cast strikes evocative religious positions: the Pietà and Christ on the cross. Before the song, Woof recites a modified rosary. In Act II, when Berger gives imaginary pills to various famous figures, he offers "a pill for the Pope"... Claude becomes a classic Christ figure at various points in the script. In Act I, Claude enters, saying, "I am the Son of God. I shall vanish and be forgotten," then gives benediction to the tribe and the audience. Claude suffers from indecision, and, in his Gethsemane at the end of Act I, he asks "Where Do I Go?". There are textual allusions to Claude being on a cross, and, in the end, he is chosen to give his life for the others. Berger can be seen as a John the Baptist figure, preparing the way for Claude.

More from the synopsis:

After handing out imaginary pills to the tribe members, saying the pills are for high profile people such as Richard Nixon, the Pope, and "Alabama Wallace", Berger relates how he was expelled from high school ("Goin' Down")... Claude returns from his draft board physical, which he passed. He pretends to burn his Vietnam War draft card, which Berger reveals as a library card. [ring any bells?????!!!!!] Claude agonizes about what to do about being drafted.

I would add to this the observation of a high school friend of mine, a girl with a beautiful sweet soprano voice that could lovingly embrace three octaves in range. She saw a production of Hair in San Francisco, and was shocked to discover that a beautiful song she enjoyed singing -- How can people be so heartless? -- was occasioned by the world's lamest plot device: the dismissive treatment of a gift tee-shirt by an inconsiderate boyfriend. Having suffered this rank offense, the offended giver draped herself in white and blue veiling resembling the Virgin Mary as she stood in a top-lit spotlight bewailing her ill-use.

My friend was so disgusted by the triviality of the back-story she said she could never sing that song again -- it was all just too creepy.

Needless to say, such things were re-imagined when the story was puffed, fluffed and packaged to be palatable for the coming 1980's. Yes, I admit it -- I rather enjoyed Forman's film, and found the look of the characters familiar from the sights and sounds of my high school days. Apparently Rado and Ragni, godfathers of the original show, were less amused.

Original writers James Rado and Gerome Ragni were unhappy with the film. In their view, Forman failed to capture the essence of Hair in that hippies were portrayed as "oddballs" and "some sort of aberration" without any connection to the peace movement. Both are quoted as saying: "Any resemblance between the 1979 film and the original Biltmore version, other than some of the songs, the names of the characters, and a common title, eludes us." In their view, the screen version of Hair has not yet been produced.

However, the film was generally well-reviewed. Writing in The New York Times Vincent Canby called it "a rollicking musical memoir.... [Michael] Weller's inventions make this Hair seem much funnier than I remember the show's having been. They also provide time and space for the development of characters who, on the stage, had to express themselves almost entirely in song.... The entire cast is superb.... Mostly... the film is a delight."

Ah, that's the problem right there. No wonder Rado/Ragni went wiggy about it. Oddballs? Aberrations? Perish the thought!

Anyhoo, it's ba-a-a-ck -- and I suspect the current revival version has reprised all the original bite. Or maybe it just bites. Like the original. Whatever.

When, oh when, will the Boomer bunkum DIE?????

Die, hippies, die, DIE!! Or maybe just grow up? Step aside and let the next generation breathe.



Sign in my office:



And don't let the door swat you on the rump on your way out.

Once upon a time, in my senior year of college...

'O LUCKY MAN' TOLD US ABOUT JUSTICE

It was 1974, it was 2009, it was the age of Obama




JUSTICE



Case against Black Panther poll-patrol thugs vaporized by Obama/Holder Justice Department





Lockerbie terrorist bomber released on 'compassionate' grounds --

First the Scottish government, then the Libyans, show their compassion for 270 murder victims --









Obama expresses justifiable outrage:
calls the decision 'inappropriate' and 'a mistake' --
oooooooo-o-o-o-ooh


Lord of the Manor Chris Dodd (D-Conn) cleared of ethics charges on sweetheart mortgage deal

AT LAST:
PROOF THAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
IS OUT OF STEP WITH THE MODERN WORLD




[hat-tip: failblog.org]

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN,
JIGGETY JIG

Back from Newfoundland, just in time to turn around and zip out of town in FULL WEDDING MODE.

Or as these folks would put it [slide to minute 4:00]:





Or maybe it's closer to this version:



Anyway, it's not me, but sonny-boy #2, and it all goes down in just four days!



THOUGHT FOR THE DAY (and the next 1200 days or so):

WE TOLD YOU SO























And I believe we also told you this:


















And we sometimes dared to mention this:













And it all added up to this:



















MY TWO-CENTS' WORTH ON HEALTH CARE:

There are many comments and criticisms one could make about any single-payer [government] health insurance system, such as Canada's. But on that subject, I am fond of making this factual (not critical) observation:

The Canadian Health Care System is a gift from the American taxpayer and their national military.

Why? Because if Canada invested in its own defense to the extent required to genuinely protect its people and territory without dependence upon the United States, the country wouldn't have a hope in Hades of affording socialized medicine.

The U.S. military is 2,300,000 strong (regular plus reserves), with plans for another 750,000 to be added within the next three years.

The Canadian military is less than 100,000 strong (regular plus reserves), with no plans for increase. The number has already increased from its nadir in 2001 [having fallen by one third in the decade since 1991].

Canada's population is approximately one tenth [10%] that of the U.S., and its land mass is larger. Canada's military population is less than one half of 1% [.043] of that of the U.S. [Feel free to help me with the math if I've screwed this up.]

Canada is essentially defended at the expense of the United States, with Canadians secure in their knowledge that the U.S. would never permit any military threat to their northern neighbour, because it's just too close to home and would leave America vulnerable.

So Canada's far (FAR) from perfect health care system is even more expensive than anybody is letting on. In at least one sense, it has cost Canadians their sovereignty.

STILL ALIVE,
SURROUNDED BY VISITING RELATIVES,
TAKING IN THE SIGHTS

What's the attraction in Newfoundland?

We report, you decide.

POTUS RETURNS FROM TRIUMPHANT FOREIGN TOUR

THANK GOD FOR THAT "RESET BUTTON" ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS --

THANK GOD HE HAS RESTORED TO AMERICA
THE RESPECT AND GOOD WILL OF THE WORLD

So please explain why nobody's asking him to dance....
[series of hat-tips: Gateway Pundit]







Then the Russians stuffed him into his little chair so he could rest his head on his knees...




But at least he got a warm and respectful reception from this member of the Libyan cast of La Cage aux Folles, who, I'm given to understand, sells upholstery fabrics on the side.



SPEAKING OF INTERIOR DECORATORS:

After several weeks doing battle with the crooked walls and ugly paint in our century-old retreat, I slapped on a hand-silk-screened, non-pasted, historically inspired Arts & Crafts wallpaper border purchased from Bradbury & Bradbury in California, and lovingly transported by hand on three different airplanes all the way to Newfoundland.

And let me say that, of all my various wallpapering experiences, this was by far THE BIGGEST DECOR PAIN IN THE ASS I HAVE EVER PUT MYSELF THROUGH.

That having been said, it is absolutely beautiful and worth every slobber of paste, every trip up one of three ladders, and every cuss word. I love it. Purty, eh? Pictures in situ forthcoming.

Daddy soon!

DADDY HOME!!

DADDY GETTING RE-ACQUAINTED
WITH HIS TEMPERPEDIC MATTRESS!!!!

The Eagle has landed, Cincinnatus has emptied the sand from his boots at the front door, and the little nuclear family is one again.

Hello again, America -- nice to see you intact. Can I get some sleep now?

... no longer.


OOH-RAH.

3:30 p.m. EDT, five o'clock in Newfoundland


I walk out my front door and see this:



I walk out my back door and see this:


Mm-m-m-m-m. Baking in the back porch sun, eating leftover cod au gratin, the cod bought fresh off the wharf just hours after it was caught. Mm-m-m. World? What world?

THE LAST WORD ON MICHAEL

We leave it to Representative Peter King of New York.



Yeah, what he said.

Duly noted: Texas Representative and perennial fluff-head Sheila Jackson-Lee (no relation, presumably) introduces a resolution to honour MJ, offered up in the House Foreign Affairs Committee -- is that because one of the kids whose parents sued him for intergenerational touchy-feely was from Australia? The resolution rolls out a plethora of "Whereases" describing Jackson's accomplishments and acts as a "global humanitarian" -- yeah, I always saw him as Mother Teresa in eyeliner... [double hat-tip Gateway Pundit]
Puh-leeeze.

May the poor tormented tiny dancer rest in cosmetically re-arranged pieces. I said my piece about him here (unattributed -- find me -- I'm not heavily disguised) to my friend David Warren, and I think it fits him like a glove, as 'twere.


The very empty suits of Michael Jackson, poseur and wannabe:



























Actual heroic "fruit salad", worth having:

AWARDED THE CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR:

Jason Dunham, Marine, Iraq
and Michael Thornton, Navy Seal, Vietnam















Mary Edwards Walker, Army, American Civil War
and Mitchell Red Cloud, Marine, WWII; Army, Korea















Michael Murphy, Navy Seal, Afghanistan
and Michael Monsoor, Navy Seal, Iraq















LIBERATORS OF IRAQ:

General Ray Odierno,
Commanding General Multi-National Force, Iraq
and
General David Petraeus,
Commander, U.S. Central Command

Big Ray is on Facebook, here. How cool is that.

Li'l Peaches has French & German parachutist badges. How cool is that.


And then there's Cincinnatus, transitioning from the Sandbox. Known around home for the last few weeks as "Daddy Soon!"

Yeah, what he said.

RE: SANFORD AND SON

COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF.
DIDN'T TRY.
LEFT IT TO CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD.

Back when Toronto's National Post ceased being a great paper and hemorrhaged all its best writers, including Christie Blatchford (Mark Steyn, John O'Sullivan.....), security should have paid closer attention to what was being removed in the file boxes when Christie cleaned out her desk. Predictably, she walked off with their balls.

A woman for whom the term "broad" was coined (and she'd be proud to know we think so), Blatchford has once again unleashed her acerbic wit and keen eye to deliver what should be the definitive pronouncement on the pathetic public follies of Michael Jackson and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Swoosh, whack, schwing, Christie successfully puts both in their proper place (way off centre, by any measure of sanity and human dignity).

(If you think she looks scary, check out her subjects...)

Truly, Michael Jackson defies any category of explanation -- Blatchford calls him a train wreck, and says it all. She cuts a wider swath through the notion that Jackson is being remembered in "makeshift" memorials throughout the world. Kitsch and ghastly, yes, but not since Princess Diana's demise have the teddy-bear temples been in the least bit spontaneous or makeshift. (Christie: "Makeshift, my arse.")

Sanford, unfortunately, is easily explained: have gun, will travel. Still, one may reasonably ask, "What the hell is it with these philandering political weasels, that they must come snivelling before the TV cameras to tell the world stuff that's nobody's business?"

There's at least a partial answer to the question: they do it to rationalize and excuse their transgressions, even as they pretend to ask forgiveness and call their actions "inexcusable". Sanford is one of the most transparently unrepentant ever to present himself for public atonement.

I'm not sure who is leaking all his Harlequin Romancified emails -- if he's doing it himself to paint a sympathetic picture of a man in the thrall of Great Passion, he has misfired completely and made an even more colossal ass of himself. I would never have guessed that they came from his wife, but even she is now granting interviews about the chronology of their shattered relationship, so who knows what else she might consider appropriate? What is wrong with these people? Does every soiled underthingy go right out on the line, in view of a deliberately assembled audience?

TOO-O-O
MUCH-CH-CH
INFOR-R-MA-A-A-A-A-TION-N-N-N-N.

Anyway, back to Blatchford. I defer to the honorable gentlewoman. Money quote:

...if ever a lover had looked deep into my eyes and said something like “I love you more than life itself,” or written, as Mr. Sanford did, “my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body,” I would have either vomited or kneed him sharply in the nuts... To me, it's a miracle that Mr. Sanford found two women (wife, Jenny, and lover, Maria) who think his verbal wanking sexy or endearing.

Read and enjoy.

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

John Adams, July 3, 1776

Adams was revved up by the mere public reading of the Declaration -- he couldn't wait the two days it took until the signing got underway, to kick up his heels and admit to himself that he and his compatriots had made history -- world history, even. Well, good for him. He deserved a headstart.

One of these days, when we've finished paying for remote maritime residences, weddings, and other nonsense, one of these days I'm gonna get down to the lower 48 and celebrate Independence Day in the U.S.of A. -- I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I can't remember the last time I did that.

Meanwhile, I have recently experienced Dominion Day (called, as I understand it, "Canada Day" by the Trudeapian generation -- blech) July 1st -- here's how it looks in Newfoundland:















And here's how Independence Day, July 4th, looks in Newfoundland, in my front yard:


[Is it FOGGY enough?]


SARAH BOWS OUT AS ALASKA'S CEO

I'm bummed and benumbed by the announcement that Sarah Palin is stepping aside as Alaska's governor just over halfway through her term, though I'm not entirely convinced that this turn of events is: (1) an omen of some terrible scandal she is only two steps ahead of, and/or (2) a sign that she's been pulverized by her deranged media enemies, and/or (3) a heralding of a 2012 presidential run. Just don't know at this point.

But it does bring to mind the whole baffling, repulsive tidal wave of mindless raging hate which has washed over her unceasingly for nearly a year now. Beating her politically was not enough. She must be beaten personally, socially, tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, stripped and shaven-headed, branded as a Jezebel, shunned as a leper, humiliated, degraded, and subjected to journalistic gang-rape until there's nothing left to spit on. It does give one pause.

Despite the unprecedented onslaught of crude and cruel attacks upon Palin and her family members, one can only hope that her decision to leave isn't due solely to the effect of the abuse. What that would teach the current Governing Party is that all you have to do to dispatch an annoying female opponent is call her a moron and a slut, call her children ree-tards and whores, and you can run her out of politics. Since the Governing Party has absolutely no compunction about using, or permitting its operatives and surrogates to use, precisely those terms, then such a strategy would seem to be a winner for them.

Of all the manifold public cases of Palin Derangement Syndrome, none has been more strange -- inexplicable, deviant, relentless, bizarro -- than the ongoing campaign by the formerly sane Andrew Sullivan to unmask Sarah Palin as not-mother to baby Trig. Sullivan has been convinced from the get-go that Trig is the child of Sarah's daughter Bristol, and that her claim to recent motherhood is a sham, to cover up the scandal of.......

WHAT?

Can anybody guess why she would claim her daughter's handicapped baby as her own? As the detectives and barristers are known to ask, cui bono? Who or what would benefit from such a claim? What's in it for Palin? For Bristol? For Trig?

Anything? Beuller?

Beuller???

Your guess is as good as mine. If Sullivan has proffered an answer to the cui bono question in the 533 posts about Trig on his blog, I haven't heard of it. As far as I know he just doesn't find the labor and birth circumstances plausible.

While it's been nothing if not entertaining to witness Sully laboring through the first ever spasms of interest in female reproductive functions in his long and publicly gay life, one longs for him to break down and admit that he is totally out of his element, in over his head, and several deep breaths short of a contraction. Please, Andrew, give it up before you hurt yourself.

Prof. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection analyzes PDS and concludes that it has all, always been about Trig. I'm not sure I buy that as a sweeping generalization, but I'm prepared to sweep it fairly broadly in respect of female/feminist PDS. A million babies a year are aborted. Nearly 5,000 of those have Down Syndrome (that's more than 90% of the Down's babies conceived -- all figures for U.S., updated). And who knows how many others among the million are aborted for being "imperfect" in various ways, from spina bifida to cleft palates. Each of those rejected children has a mother who knows what she did.

Sarah Palin, and any other mother who chooses to carry such a pregnancy to term, is a rebuke to the rejecting mothers, and to all those advocates of "choice" who have abstracted the unborn child into a perverse principle of autonomy. Sarah Palin doesn't need to address such women in any specific name -- all she needs to do is love and want her child, and treat him as she would treat any of her other children as she pursues her career, and she is a slap in the face of "choice". And they hate her for it. For militant advocates of "choice", it is all about Trig. They will do banshee howls to the contrary, but they lie -- it's all about Trig, and it always has been. It was deranged, and it yielded filth like this.

For the information of Andrew Sullivan and his fellow birth-truthers and Trig-obsessives, BTW, people who actually have children with Down syndrome would be the first to tell you that in the presence of large crowds and high levels of conversational din, a baby with Down's is inclined to sleep. Trig's presence in large crowds at late hours was less disturbing to him than it would be to non-Down's babies. So you can stop pretending that you care about the child's welfare and his mother doesn't. I suspect she's read the literature, and I know you haven't.

Riddle me this, leftosphere: John-John and Caroline Kennedy in Daddy's office or in their blue coats at the funeral? -- American icons.

Pelosi's grandchildren all over the Speaker's podium? -- an inspiration.

Sasha and Malia critiquing Mommy's convention speech and going off-script to Daddy on-screen from St. Louis (or was it Kansas City? he didn't know at the time)? -- cute as a button, "case closed".

But Piper and Bristol and Trig and and Willow at the convention and on the campaign trail? -- props, human shields, PR devices being pimped.

Riddle me this. I'm stumped.

How coincidental to these new developments that the oh-so-sophisticated Vanity Fair magazine is featuring a massive hatchet-job on Palin in its August iss-yew. Stenographer Todd Purdum carves her up pretty good, and finds McCain staffers to do the same.

But there's another theme running through the article... Memo to Purdum: seek medical help for an erection lasting longer than four hours.

Come to think of it, I just read Serious Historian (!?) Douglas Brinkley's breathless Vanity Fair profile of Johnny Depp. Like I said to the other guy, Dougie: seek medical help for an erection lasting longer than four hours or a week on a private yacht.

IRAQ SOVEREIGNTY DAY

UNITED STATES FORCES EXIT THE CITIES OF IRAQ
[take up defensive positions in....the suburbs?....
still armed -- still ready to kick ass]

Greyhawk says so.

A carefully chosen word, sovereignty, to distinguish between the advent of liberty (long since achieved by the coalition forces) and the commencement of the safeguarding of liberty by native Iraqi forces. I'm grateful that the Iraqi government chose this mode of expression, even if President Al Maliki was somewhat less than gracious in his public pronouncements, neglecting to give credit where credit is principally due.

Ahem.
























And ahem.























And even ahem.


Some Iraqis -- I'd even venture to guess MOST -- know how to say "thanks" to their liberators. And to them all I say, you are so very welcome.

There could be no more important assessment of the day than that provided by two of Iraq's truest-bluest patriots, who have raised their voices through the miracle of emerging cyber media, as witnesses to their country's reality, for better or for worse, since the explosive days of early 2003. I refer to Omar and Muhammad, the faithful brother scribes at Iraq The Model. Their commitment to the truth on the groud, their faith in the future and their pride in every inch of their country's slow creep forward have been an inspiration. Today it is Omar who has this to say:

For Iraq and its people however, this war was the beginning of a struggle for rebirth, a very difficult but necessary one, for sure. People of my generation who were born in democracies may take the freedom they enjoy for granted. This is certainly not the case for me or my people. I was born a decade after the murderous Ba'ath Party grabbed power in Baghdad in the sinister coup of July 1968. To us, the war brought an end to that 35-year-long nightmare and the beginning of an era of freedom, thanks to our friends in the coalition.

For me and many Iraqis, it was certainly worth it. Life is better today than it was before 2003. That is even though we were on the receiving end of this war in all its phases, from initial invasion through the bloody sectarian violence and terror that paralysed the country for years. Despite the high price in blood, today is brighter than yesterday. Above all, we have hope - something we did not have under Saddam's dictatorship - that tomorrow will be even brighter.

OOH-RAH.

Speaking of which, Cincinnatus exits the sandbox sometime in the next little sometime. That's all I can -- any more info and I'd have to kill you. Junior Buttons at home has taken to saying, "Daddy soon!"

Speaking of too much info:

Well, come to think of it, I don't want to speak of it. There's too darn much speaking going on altogether. I do NOT want to know how Whacko Jacko looked at his last rehearsal, or how the make-me-puke Governor of South Carolina found his "soul-mate" and how many times they tristed -- dude! STFU!!!!

And I sure as hell don't want to hear the Comrade-in-Chief dither on about how spending more money on health care saves money [exsqueeze me?], or blather on how we didn't let the bastards get us down in Iraq. (We didn't, of course, and there were bastards -- and he was one of them. Thought we'd forget, did you, Bambi? Fat chance.)

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.