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.

TIME TO GET SERIOUS

The Republican field of had-beens and side-show fire-eaters is blessedly narrowing: Huckster Huckabee declines, Trump opts for tinsel and tap-dancing, Romney and Gingrich stay technically in the race, but choose political calculation over principle and assume kami-kaze mode.



The day is fair, the plain is wide and green -- look to the high ground, and see where the young lions cast their eyes across the expanse, in anticipation of sauntering down the hill through the tall grass and into the fray: Ryan, Bachman, Christie, Rubio, West, go forward to nudge their noses up against the waiting Pawlenty and sharp-toothed Cain -- amid Palin's roars of encouragement and zeal issuing from the Alaskan heights [above and to the left on the map, but standing shoulder to shoulder and to the right among the Party].





Snarl, stalk, pounce.











Anybody seen Fred Thompson?

PRESIDENT GINGRICH?

Uh, yeah. Right.


After years of odious behaviour with women, this was the topper. Remember it.



I am quite prepared to believe that Newt's conversion to Catholicism is sincere, as far as it goes. Or perhaps I would believe more deeply in it if it were accompanied by a realization that, as a fitting embrace of humility, it is his time to develop his talents as a historian and withdraw from the corrupting life of politics and public attention -- he has much, MUCH to atone for privately, and it is time for a more private life.

That he is prepared to welcome the full spotlight of a presidential run, and all that it will illuminate in his catalogue of personal sins, makes one wonder whether he has cultivated a sufficient sense of sin to consider his conversion complete. Let's remember his first response the first time he was questioned [for which he should have been amply prepared with an answer reliant on the Christian vocabulary of contrition], politely but pointedly, by a Christian journalist, about his dingy moral history. It was pathetic.

Newt Gingrich will never be President. The fact that he can't see this is evidence enough that he is still seeing through a glass darkly, and has a long way to go on the road to conversion. It's a road he should walk in solitude, not in the glare of public adulation. Sad.

Post-script: It is, of course, important to note that, by all accounts, Gingrich's personal history is pale compared to that of, say, Ted Kennedy, and it is flagrant injustice that Gingrich past sins will be illuminated with as much intensity as Kennedy's were hidden by a complicit press. But, at the end of the day, we must note that, after Chappaquiddick, everybody knew that Kennedy would never be President either, and, despite his best efforts, he never was. Despite the decades-long shielding by the complicit press, the American public did not forget, and Kennedy's fate was sealed at Martha's Vineyard -- thank God. If he'd been elected, I'd have had to move to Canada.

Oh wait. I did that anyway. But it was an apolitical, rather than political, move. That's my story and I'm sticking to it -- cuz it's true.

If I may quote myself:

Step out of the way, Newt. If it was ever your moment (and I doubt that), it has most assuredly passed. Make way for the New Kids on the Block (Kantor, Ryan, Rubio, even Palin. No Newt, no Mitt, no way. That's it.)

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

New York Times Magazine runs an anti-military hit-piece as its cover story a week before the Navy Seals become national heroes for giving Osama Bin Laden some old-fashioned high-velocity "lead poisoning". Obviously not bothered by the fact that it's a re-hash of Rolling Stone's recent anti-military hit-piece. Heck, when your professional soldiers are drooling homicidal maniacs, one can't cover the same piece of news too often.

Nice cover.


Interestingly, the article appeared on the same weekend I took this picture. Here's how my son the Marine-beast passes his off-hours.






What a psycho.

'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE O-DAY..."

Radio guru and tart-tonged funny-man Dennis Miller recently suggested that someone should write a parody of "The Night Before Christmas" to cover the Mother's Day events in Abbottabad, Pahkeestahn. On the fly he tried to name it, and came up with "Twas the Night Before Monday."


Here is my entry. Miller did not choose to post it. Epic Fail, if you ask me. See what you think.

I.

Twas the night before Monday,
And all through the yard,
Not a creature was stirring
Not even the guard.
My turban was hung
On a hook by the closet,
And I’d put on that bathrobe
With its secret cash deposit.
The children were nestled,
Three or four to a bed,
While visions of goatburgers
Danced in their heads.
And mama in her bed-socks
And pink silk chador
Had just settled down
With one eye on the door,
When up on the roof
There arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed
To see what was the matter.
Then away from the window
I ducked like a flash
And wondered if someone
Was stealing my stash.
The moon on the breast
Of my new teen-aged wife
Gave me major incentive
To cling to my life.
When what to my wondering
Eyes should appear
But a camouflaged hulk
In a mountain of gear,
With a bunch of his comrades
So lively and quick,
I just about pee’d
And I thought I’d be sick.
More rapid than eagles
To the rooftop they came.
And they grunted and shouted
And called me by name.
“You Bastard, you raghead,
You murdering f#ck --
You’ve bombed your last building
And humvee and truck!
So mumble to Allah,
‘Cause the last thing you’ll see
Is one bullet from New York,
And one from D.C.,
And then Pennsylvania,
And then we’ll be done.
You got nowhere to hide,
You got nowhere to run.”
They had hovered above,
Down their ropes they had shimmied.
They came in from all sides,
Everywhere but the chimney.
As I rubbed my red eyes
And collected my hat
They had filled up the bedroom
And cornered their rat.
They had night-vision goggles
And great big-ass guns,
And scared me so bad
I developed the runs.
Their rifle-sights glinted
And fixed on me tight.
Their cheeks were all green
And their teeth gritted white.
The beard on my chin
Turned as white as the snow,
And I knew I was done for,
With no place to go.
My skinny old face
And my lazy-boy belly
All shook when they laughed,
Like a bowlful of jelly.
I gave a weak smile
And a ‘whatever’ shrug.
The last thing I remember
Was the 45 slug.”

II.
Then up to the house-top
These warriors blazed,
Jumped into their choppers,
And skyward they raised,
With a sh#t-load of hardware
From Osama’s hut
And a body-bag ready
For his sorry butt.

And back home in Washington,
Deep under the White House,
All the President’s men,
And one President’s spouse,
Were all taking notes
[with a few variations!]
To spread to the press
And the rest of the nation.
There was one basic theme
On which there was agreement:
That Obama, like Beowulf,
Had gone after the demon.
Like Leonidas, Caesar,
King David, or Patton,
Like Joanie of Arc,
Or that genius Saladin,
He’d pounded his fist
And said “It’s a go!”
Then they gave him a footstool
To sit on for the show.
He had raced off the golf course
To watch it go down,
And the nation was grateful
He'd managed to be in town.
He spoke not a word
While the Seals were at work,
In fear that, beside them,
He’d look like a jerk.
But I heard him exclaim,
As they choppered from sight,

“Hot-damn! Who’d have thought it?
I guess Might can do Right!”

HERE'S ONE FOR THE BOY

POST POST MORTEM


A SOBERING REFLECTION, OUTSIDE THE WIRE

Self-embedded journo J.D. Johannes sends reactions from Helmand Province, Afghanistan. No dance of jubilation here.


NOTHING FROM NOTHING LEAVES NOTHING

Acerbic journo Christopher Hitchens (peace be upon him, plus a miraculous cure of his cancer through the intervention of Blessed John Henry Newman.....) weighs in on the Bin Laden take-down. Can't argue with anything here.


This just in: NO CORPSE PHOTO RELEASE

A caller to Rush, in a dandy New York accent, just described us as "a nation of milksops". Well, not the whole nation. Just the shrinking violets in this photo -- that's not everybody, mind you. Who's the smallest, most pouty-looking guy in the room? :



Rush just now asks the $64 billion question: if the Navy Seals had put women's underwear on Osama's head, would the administration and Dick Durbin have demanded the release of the photos?

Rush -- such a tease.


This just in:

Some IDIOT REPUBLICAN -- Mike Rogers, House Republican Intelligence Committee Chairman, speaks on 60 Minutes this Sunday.

Imagine how the American people would react if Al Qaeda killed one of our troops or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the internet.

Imagine!



Imagine.


Imagine.



Two words for you, Representative Rogers: Menchaca and Tucker.

Think I'll send Mr. Rogers an email to his Beltway neighborhood.


PRESIDENT DRAGGED KICKING AND SCREAMING
INTO HISTORY

A slight exaggeration, but only that. According to "White House Insider" this was not so much a "gutsy decision" on the President's part, but a decision forced down his guts by E.T. (Leon Panetta, resident grown-up) and others with a better-developed sense of world affairs. And the ditherer-in-chief still took 16 hours and a nap to make up his mind about it. We have that from Britain's Daily Mail -- and aren't we tired of hearing top-line U.S. stories only from people overseas?

White House Insider is an unidentified internet source, with a long history of exposing chaos and incompetence inside the Obama administration, whose reports are published on a few different third-party sites. He or she is apparently a big Hillary Fan, so not some plant from Fox News or other Traitors to America (/sarcasm on).

I just discovered him/her only yesterday, and can make no claims for validity, but have since found that someone as savvy and sage as Roger Simon pays serious attention, and has urged the dude/dudess to come out of the shadows.

Some background here. One to watch for, I'm guessing.


PAKISTAN CLAIMS TO HAVE INFORMED U.S.
ABOUT BIN LADEN HIDEOUT IN 2009

Again from the Brits, at Sky News.

We report, you decide.

Oh say can you see
Muslim sensitivities,
Which so proudly we hail
Facing east on our knees.

SO HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND?


GLORIOUS

I'm embarrassed to admit that, with all the other events of this weekend, personal and global, I have neglected to devote any time to watching or reading about the Beatification of Pope John Paul II. But how wonderful that the events of his life, death, and growing hagiography have changed forever the complexion of "May Day".


JUST AS GLORIOUS

Blessed John Paul would approve of my excuse: just too busy gathering with the fam in sunny So-Cal to witness as new granddaughter was welcomed into the Body of Christ, waking up just long enough to "WAH!" her assent. A truly beautiful blossom on the family tree.


HITCHED WITHOUT A HITCH

Felicitations to the once and future King William of What's Left of the Empire, and future Queen Katherine. We wish them the best, despite the fact that it was a case of "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join in Holy Matrimony this man and this woman who have been shacked up together for at least three years that we know of, and undoubtedly making the beast with two backs for years before that....."

Considering the colossal marital failures of his immediate family, especially the tragic exploitation of his child-bride mother, one can hardly blame Prince Wills for creeping a slow and twisted path toward the altar of glaringly public commitment.

Anyway, lovely show (if musically under-served -- pretty boring choices on the whole -- "Jerusalem" all the more outstanding by comparison). And sincere hopes that the good side of Diana -- the one that enabled her boys to physically embrace the dark-skinned, the down-and-out, and the diseased, and to scrub toilets in Patagonia or eat dust in Afghanistan, and to wait in line behind the "commoners" at McDonald's -- will aid them both, toward transforming yet preserving the British monarchy for generations to follow.


NOT SO GOOD:

BUSH-WHACKED!!!

There have been scores of brilliant headlines in the past 48 hours, many of them via the always brilliant Instapundit. This may be my favourite:

Team Six: From Cheney's Secret Assassination Squad To Obama's Super-Awesome Clean-up Crew

Team Six is the elite pocket of the Navy Seals that carried out the 40-minute raid that ended ten years on the hunt for September 11 Master-mind and Sugar Daddy, Osama Bin Laden.

The headline says it all: how every corner of political left in America, from the raving street-mobs to the cosmetically "civilized" denizens of federal congress, took one position while George W. Bush was President [an official position which, we hasten to add, they maintained aggressively during the Obama campaign of 2008, and during the formative years of the Obama administration], and took the totally opposite position, at least for one week in springtime, in order to support and praise a military mission ordered by President Barack Obama.



Let us be clear [as Rush Limbaugh has just now pointed out -- I paraphrase]:

The assassination raid which killed Osama Bin Laden was made possible ONLY by the kind of interrogations carried out years ago, during the Bush presidency, for which Obama and many others now wielding power in Washington D.C. would happily have prosecuted and at least impeached, if not imprisoned, the former President, Vice-President, and members of their administration.

And, had this assassination been carried out during the Bush administration, Obama and the voices of the left would have made the case that such an act would inevitably create and incite more terrorists, and make the world less safe.

No rational and/or literate human being can deny this. The record is the record.


[I suspect that Limbaugh will be putting his monologue up on the site this afternoon. Audio's of the past two days are on his Facebook page. Nobody can lay it out better.]

The record is the record. Or is it?


NBC's DAVID GREGORY BEGINS NEW ASSIGNMENT BROADCASTING FROM SOME DISTANT PLANET

What colour is the sky in your world, Mr. Gregory? Does it hurt your brain to engage in contortions too extreme for Cirque de Soleil?



[hat-tip Breitbart TV]


As one of my military family once put it (can't remember which one -- possibly the nephew), we went in there to win hearts and minds: one to the heart, two to the mind. Waitin' for the photos.


By the way....

ANYBODY REMEMBER
THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE?

Of course not. That was the point -- the point of releasing it when a third of the entire planet (literally) was preparing to watch Wills and Kate get married. The Prime Directive of political PR is that, if you have bad news, release it on a Friday when everybody's focused on their weekend fun. The Birth Certificate came out on a Wednesday, but heck, with the wedding on Friday, the excitement at fever pitch, and the pre-game shows in full swing, the weekend really started on about Wednesday, so timing was perfect......


HA HA HA!! THEY GOT US!!

WE THOUGHT THEY WERE USING THE WEDDING
TO BURY THE BIRTH CERT,

WHEN ALL THE TIME THEY HAD OSAMA
UP THEIR SLEEVE!!

Even if you believe the certificate is genuine, and Barry Soetero was birthed on Oahu [and I'm quite prepared to believe it -- though I was equally prepared not to, in which case I preferred it not be discovered], the issues surrounding Obama's childhood and the phony biography he has been selling for years [I'm not talking about Dreams From My Father -- that's just a symptom] are still an albatross, and not the sort of thing the President wants floating to the surface as he prepares to run in 2012.

It's still a mystery as to why Obama has spent nearly three years and a rumored $2 million resisting the release of the certificate. If his calculation was that the longer the birthers boil over about it, the more foolish they look, and the 2 mill is a small price to pay for keeping them in this condition -- well, that's actually a reasonable political strategem.

But maybe it's still risky to have them on the fringes of the campaign in the summer of 2012, so better defuse it earlier on, especially as fund-raising is gearing up. So release the certificate -- which shines a light on the fact that his mother was a gormless teenager at the time, and his father a 25-year-old itinerant student who may or may not have married her -- and do it well enough ahead of time, at a moment when it would be swamped by other news, and you have the best possible scenario for putting the matter to rest. Game, set, match. Advantage Obama.

That was the theory. Subsequent efforts by the Mainstream Media (and Obama himself) to paint the President as the bold captain who forged the plan to take out Osama, and who stood alone in that crossing-the-Delaware moment as he gave his manly utterance "Get 'er done" to cue his well-muscled death squad er, Special Ops team, are designed to make the swamping seem complete.

Good luck with that, scribblers. At the end of the day, there is way to much fibre optic cable lying around to allow you to stuff the inconvenient truths down the memory hole.


WHILE WE'RE AT IT:

Let's not forget one of the other famous deeds of Navy Seal Team Six. Our friends on the Left cheered and jeered when the Seals were subject to Court Martial for punching one of the world's most wanted terrorists, and giving him (ooooh) a bloody lip in the process of apprehending him, alive, for prosecution. All were exonerated, of course, because it was 100% B.S. Where were their fans in the sycophantasmic media then?


A peaceful and uneventful next weekend to one and all.

P.S. Last night Canada voted in a Conservative majority government, and despatched the Liberal Party (Canada's Natural Rulers, if you ask them) into political Siberia. Spring is here.

MICHAEL YON

DEO GRATIAS

On the one hand, maybe we should congratulate that fine journalistic organ, Rolling Stone [see example of pioneering edgy cover art, left -- NO WARNING re: extremely graphic and disturbing image], for covering the story that no one else in the MSM will touch, for fear of making the Anointed One look bad from what's going on under his watch [see my post below] -- but wouldn't you know it, their version has to turn out to be a MASSIVE LIE.

How to we know? Because a guy in the know, on the scene, totally ahead of this story, has "called BULLSH*T" on Rolling Stone's heinous distortions.

Go ahead and read them here, if you have nothing better to do -- and be sure to watch the Motorcycle Kill video ["WARNING!...extremely graphic and disturbing images" says Rolling Stone!] to see what kind of MURDEROUS MANIACS we have running around in the American uniform.

I watched it, and found myself scratching my head as to what was the big deal.

Of course, as it turns out, the soldiers involved in that incident were never members of the so-called "kill team" which is the so-called subject of the article, and had turned their filmed record of this encounter over to Michael Yon a year ago because they had nothing to hide.

So if you really want to know what goes on, read Michael Yon as he calls bullsh*t on Rolling Stone -- which may not be gathering any moss, but certainly knows a lot about collecting slime.