WHAT I'M READING

This morning I decided to pick up a book I've had on the shelf for ages, that Buckley kid's No Way to Treat a First Lady.

Not just because we're all still keening over the loss of WFB and have Buckleys on the brain -- I had been thinking for some time that this was an opportune season for once again revelling in the satirical verbgasms of WFB's son and heir Christopher [looking winsome at left], in his thinly veiled fantasy about the White House murder that might have been, had certain lamps and ash-trays taken a fatal path.

Talk about last minute -- I've started the book just 24 hours before what may be the final day when it can be assumed absolutely that any literate American will understand what it's about. After tomorrow, when Hillary Clinton's political career will likely be dealt its mortal wound, the relevance and recognition factor for Buckley's hilarious (Hillary-us) novel will have begun their warp-speed plummet. Catch it while it's still maximum fun, people!

The reality-based inspiration for Buckley's tale of a First Lady accused of "assassinating" her POTUS-husband [after he's found dead in the bed next to her, following an energetic tryst in the Lincoln bedroom with a donor's wife and then the ensuing marital smack-down] is clearly the embattled Clinton-on-Clinton White House marriage during the Lewinsky period -- a fact which might have him courting accusations of slander were he not to draw a clear, chronological distinction between his aptly-named lead character, "Beth MacMann" (Lady Bethmac) and the former First Lady, on page 21, calling Beth

a far cry from Hillary Clinton, who contented herself with taking care of her husband and giving the occasional tea for congressional wives.

Uh, yeah. We all recognize that woman.


HOW WE KNOW THAT RADICAL FEMINISM IS DEAD
[and it's not just because this is a Hillary item]

Feminist eye-con Gloria Steinem displayed her customary grace and perspective while out on the stump for Mrs. Clinton in Texas. Money quote:

Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], ‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?

[Audience laughter -- at what???? This passes for wit? Not to mention that it makes no sense whatever.]

I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so...I am so grateful that she [Clinton] hasn’t been trained to kill anybody. And she probably didn’t even play war games as a kid. It’s a great relief from Bush in his jump suit and from Kerry saluting...from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109 we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.

Oy.


Let's have a memory moment -- it's 2004 and Ms. Steinem has hit the political trail again:

Steinem still has the leggy looks of a rock star -- and enough edginess to bring a room full of punk rockers to their feet. She did that in November when she introduced the feminist punk band Le Tigre while on the road stumping for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

John Kerry -- hot rocker and baby-killer. What a relief not to be campaigning for that guy again!
























Mrs. Clinton hits on yet another winning strategy.

A LITTLE TOUCH OF HARRY --
HE WISHES IT HAD BEEN MORE

Back at my post of May 16 last year I opined as how Prince Harry's aborted deployment to Iraq [Basra] with the British Army was the shameful work of a shameless media -- that if they could just keep it under wraps termporarily, he might successfully deploy to the hinterlands of Afghanistan, and do some soldier-stuff that might yet make a man of him, not to mention serving his country in an inspiring way.

The Brits obviously took my advice (heh) -- but the shameless media of other countries did not.

Harry put in ten good weeks, and then a couple of marginal ladies'-type publications in Germany and Australia let the royal kitten out of the bag.

This could have gone pretty much unnoticed, but then the human megaphone, Matt Drudge, got hold of the story, and the jig was up. Harry had to be extracted forthwith from Afghanistan for the safety of himself and his comrades (though he will probably now be a fairly good-sized target in Britain -- that was inevitable, one supposes).

Drudge, on the whole, does pretty good public service -- he only occasionally gets ahead of himself on the facts. But in this case, he had his facts correct -- he just had no conscience about the consequences of making them public. He could have waited six more weeks -- then big headlines, big graphics, big story on the Prince Who Pounded the Taliban. But he refused to risk being scooped. So he put a big fat target on Harry's back, and the backs of his mates. But what the hell, eh? Drudge got the big score -- that's what counts, right?

Drudge offers an email for comments, [DRUDGE@DRUDGEREPORT.COM] but I'm not aware that they ever get posted anywhere. So here's what I sent him:

I don't suppose we'll ever know exactly who was first to leak that Prince Harry was serving in Afghanistan, though I understand the Drudge Report boasted an exclusive. Imagine that -- boasting at being first to put not just Harry but everyone he serves with in imminent danger of being specially, and no doubt spectacularly, targeted for death by Taliban murderers. You must be so proud!

As the parent of two members of the American military (one in Iraq), and a friend to people with a son in the British army (who served in Basra, and dreaded the scheduled deployment of Prince Harry there, once it was broadcast in the news), I condemn whole-heartedly your complicity in the publication of news which served no purpose whatsoever beyond endangering the lives of finer men than you, and frustrating the remote possibility that an aristocratic wastrel might be made something resembling a man at last, for the betterment of both himself and the increasingly sad-sack country over which his family reigns. Had he been permitted to complete his deployment without exposure, the headlines and your readership would have been just as big when the word got out that he had returned home -- no loss to you.

Disgusting. Shame.

When CODE PINK calls a CODE RED --
Who ya gonna call?

Not Ghostbusters!

Misery-muffin, motor-mouth, and pain-in-the-peacenik, the (appropriately-named) Medea Benjamin, apparently got into a scuffle with a drive-by spit artist while striking peaceful poses in front of the embattled Marine recruiting office in Berkeley, CA. She had the stones to chase after the guy until he got out of his car to confront her, at which time she feared for her safety and pushed the panic button.

Unfortunately for her, this time there were no police anywhere in sight, so she did what real Americans do in a crisis.

She called out for [wait for it] the Marines.

Some radio talker (of whom I know nothing else) covers the whole thing here.
[h/t Michelle Malkin at HOT AIR]

Gotta love it.

THINGS TO MAKE YOU SAY,
"HM-M-M-M-M-M...."

Creative soul Roger von Oech is visiting Vietnam, including the place John McCain called "home" (NOT) for 5 1/2 years. Take a gander. [h/t Instapundit]


Meanwhile back in Sweet Home Chicago, one of Barack Obambi's close associates, Tony Rezko, [pictured at left between.... Bill and Hill! Love it!] goes on trial on charges of being one of the bigger rats in the sewer which is (and has been for a good century and a half) Chicago/Illinois politics.

Promises to be revealing as to just what sort of goo Mr. Obambi had to wade in, in order to shoot to the top in so short a time. The proceedings do not appear to be aimed with any specificity at He-who-shall-not-be-middle-named, but it remains to be seen whether there will be something lingering around him besides the Odor of Sanctity. [h/t Instapundit again, with help from NewsAlert and ABC]


YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS INDEPENDENT MEDIA IN CANADA

... and they're saying that Obambi is talking out of both sides of his mouth about NAFTA. Thanks to CTV for reporting that there's apparently some nudge-nudge/wink-wink going on when the Senator tells Ohio that NAFTA will be up for grabs in an Obama administration -- because his operatives tell Canadian trade officials that, aw shucks, he's just joshin', 'cause he's tryin' to win an election. Captain Ed, now at HOT AIR, gives the details.

WFB R.I.P.

High priest of American conservatism William F. Buckley Jr. has finally retired, in the Big Sense, gone to his reward to sit, appropriately, at the RIGHT hand of the Father, for whose honor and glory he always worked.

As he might say in one of his native tongues, Requiescat in pace.

From Terry to K-Lo at National Review Online's Corner Blog:

I am saddened by the passing of William F. Buckley, but our loss is Heaven's gain, and I'm sure the Good Lord told his angels to "Bring me a dictionary, Buckley's coming."

ENDGAME: I GET PUBLISHED IN THE POST
.... with a few tweaks here and there

[scroll down to previous post for the back-story]

I never write anything that I don't want to see published, but I also know that there are certain elements the editors love to cut, so I always include at least one -- usually an opening or parting "shot" that could be seen as throw-away. Today's National Post fails to disappoint -- they clipped off my tag-line about "Let's pray that when the next plane touches down, there's time enough for a second opinion." The rest of the toned-down toned-down version made it through.

Was I being too harsh with Dr. John Ross?

Puh-le-e-eze.

I wonder what Marine Veteran Ty Ziegel would think, speaking as an "amorphous, waxy" thoroughly human being, made triumphantly in the image of God:

ANNIVERSARY WALTZ


Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online reminds us that today marks fifteen years into America's defensive war against Islamo-fascism -- that is, fifteen years ago today the first attempt to topple the World Trade Center failed spectacularly, but still cost seven lives and a thousand injuries. [h/t Captain Ed]

He said/I said --
my day with the NATIONAL POST

At the bottom of a page well into the main news section of yesterday's National Post was an article about how the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has occasionally (about half a dozen times since '03) served as an emergency stopover for wounded American military personnel who, on their way back from Germany, develop complications and need serious medical attention before they can make it to one of the U.S.-based veterans' hospitals. The transport plane touches down in Halifax, and the soldier gets attended to in a hurry, sometimes having an extended stay before going on to the States.

Nice story.

Then they interview one of the doctors, on a day when the soldier in question doesn't make it, and dies in the plane at the Halifax terminal. The young man was a burn victim, whose face Dr. John Ross describes as "amorphous, waxy," as if it were covered in drippings from a burning candle.

Thanks, fella. This is a doctor, mind you, who has had (one would think) plenty of opportunity to see the effects of diseases and disasters during his career -- is it not strange that he seems to be "creeped out" by what he sees?

However, he seems pretty convinced of at least one thing:

Dr. Ross figures the tragic death at least spared the maimed soldier's relatives another kind of ordeal.

Time and again these days, young troops in their prime are returning home alive, but with permanently mangled bodies or damaged minds, the physician noted.

"It made me think about all the families whose loved ones come back in an altered state," he said. "If he had survived ... the family would never get closure."

Ah yes -- closure. What could be better than that? A child, husband, brother, father, alive and by your side through thick and thin, sharing his needs and pain as well as his love while you work through the challenges together... well, hell, who needs that, when you could put him in the ground and get closure????!!!!

Needless to say, I wasn't happy with this grim little anecdote, so I wrote a letter to the editor of the Post. Interest in publishing it was expressed right away, but with some caveats. Here's the dialogue of the day:

ME:

To the Editors:

It's nice to know that injured military personnel have an emergency rest stop available to them in Halifax when they're in need. But there's something disturbing in learning that their attending physician might be Dr. John Ross, who has decided that soldiers' families should be spared the "ordeal" of having their wounded children survive. My own son's four months in Iraq have so far been quite uneventful (thank you, General Petraeus), but should he come back injured I would hope he won't fall under the care of someone who thinks he'd be better off dead than handicapped. Does Dr. Ross think this of all mentally or physically disabled people, or just those who got that way because of war? Let's pray that when the next plane touches down, there's time enough for a second opinion.

HE:

Thanks for the letter. I will try to get it in tomorrow. And to be clear: I presume your son is part of a U.S. Military division. Can you tell me which one??

ME:

He is a captain in the Marine Corps, a helicopter pilot stationed at Al Asad air base in Anbar Province... [yada-yada-yada.....]

HE:

I showed your letter to the reporter who wrote the story and another editor, and they think you’re being too harsh on the doctor, and your letter portrays him as heartless. Could you make your point differently, perhaps suggesting that families would prefer to have the injured soldiers back alive, no matter how damaged they are???

ME:

What I sent to you was the toned-down version of my thoughts about Dr. Ross. He is by no means the first person to speak as though the 90% survival rate for Iraq war wounded is one of the DOWNSIDES to the conflict, though one hears that kind of comment more often from politicians or journalists than doctors. It is particularly repugnant in a doctor, and gives one every reason to speculate on whether he thinks of the IED-disabled all that differently from people severely handicapped from birth. I have a few friends with Down's syndrome children who, I suspect, will think I was not harsh enough, as they have encountered this brand of tossed-off heartlessness way too many times themselves.

That having been said, I offer the toned-down version of the earlier toned-down version, below:


It's nice to know that injured military personnel have an emergency rest stop available to them in Halifax when they're in need. But their families are unlikely to be comforted by the idea that a wounded soldier's survival with permanent disabilities represents an "ordeal" they might prefer to be spared, as suggested by Dr. John Ross. My own son's four months in Iraq have so far been quite uneventful (thank you, General Petraeus), but should he come back injured I would hope he wouldn't fall under the care of someone who thinks that he'd be better off dead than handicapped, and that his family would rather know the "closure" of his death than rally him to fight for his life. This is no way for anyone, especially a doctor, to think of mentally or physically disabled people, regardless of how they came to be in that condition. Let's pray that when the next plane touches down, there's time enough for a second opinion.

HE:

Thanks for this version. It still seems harsh. How about these additional, minor changes.

Instead of "... but should he come back injured I would hope he wouldn't fall under the care of someone who thinks that he'd be better off dead than handicapped ..."

How about:"... but should he come back with severe injuries, I would hope he wouldn't fall under the care of someone who thinks that he'd be better off dead than badly handicapped ..."

ME:

Strikes me as a distinction without a difference, but I'm willing to go with it if it seems appropriate.

I guess for me the word "handicapped" already implies severe injuries, since most military people have the ability to shake off what would leave the rest of us prostrate and whining. Nearly 60% of those classified as "wounded" in Iraq are back with their units within 72 hours -- and many who have lostlimbs wish they could be. It's weird, but it's a fact. Some of the proudest young people I've ever seen in uniform have appliances where pieces of themselves used to be, or have scalps full of white zig-zag scars. Hence my disgust with the good doctor's willingness to let them go -- on the whole they are the first to rage against the dying of the light.

I sent the final reply about 11:30 p.m., so it was either too late to go to print, or they just decided to can the whole thing in the face of my intransigence. Will see tomorrow a.m.

Two of the Few and the Proud I had in mind in my last exchange, with whom we broke bread at a conference a couple of years ago:

Lcpl Steven Schultz (left) and SSgt Mark Graunke (right)











Ooh-rah.

AT THE MOVIES
(on the couch):

"MIRACLE" -- [2004] story of the 1980 American Olympic hockey team that whupped the Soviet posterior -- bunch of 20-year-old college boys who rolled over the hardened meaty Muscovites of Glorious Soviet Armsky. CSI-NY's criminally cute Eddie Cahill plays star goalie Jim Craig, whose flag-draped circumnavigation of the rink after the U.S.A. gold medal game (against some ridiculous snow-nation like Finland or something a few days after the Russky-smash) is a sight never to be forgotten by anyone who ever enjoyed being American. Kurt Russell plays hard-bitten super-coach Herb Brooks.

Those were the days -- "malaise days" during the reign of the toothiest and (second?) worst president of the 20th century, James Earl Carter, whose snivelling, sanctimonious voice-overs gum up the background of the film sound track, against archival footage of the hostage-taking in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and re-enactments of gas station line-ups.


It's almost impossible to imagine (or, if you watched those games, as I did, to remember) how it felt to have a nation so united in the sheer joy of its own identity, in the knowledge that we had the character to survive defeat and humiliation, and to take on the neighbourhood bullies in the name of the neighbourhood. Today we stand in an arena against a team who play by no rules, who cheat and batter on every shift, while the good guys' team consists solely of Jim Craig and a towel boy against a thousand ruthless toothless forwards. But rather than uniting with our banner over our shoulders, roughly half the country is throwing pennies in our goal crease and and tying Craig's skate laces together. And no chants of "U.S.A" can be heard over the chorus of "We Are Scum".

/hockey metaphor off

DIAPER-BLOGGING AT MIRAMAR

Winefred disappears for a few days while caring for the Teufel-puppy, what with Daddy in Iraq and Mommy at a wedding.

Rocking baby to sleep to the distant Sounds of Freedom. (something in an F/A-18 Super Hornet?)

SIGN OF THE TIMES
(where? where?... huh? )

I just Google-mapped Israel to find a certain street in Jerusalem so I could a direct someone to shop there.

Good luck, sweetie.

Surprise -- Israel is blank.

The West Bank is delineated by a dashed line, but the country is otherwise uniformly grey -- no roads, cities, placenames, rivers, airports, features of any kind whatsoever.

Is this bigotry and hatred at work? Or just garden-variety cowardice? Or maybe Israel's just hiding, to save its scrawny neck from the bad guys.

Who cares. It's life. It's Google. It's a scandal. It's B.S., big-time. (screw 'em all -- Yahoo maps, Mapquest and Multimap are equally useless.)


Mostly it's Madmood Ahmadinnerjacket's dream come true -- that's the main point.

Israel -- POOF!!!! [Kaboom]

So nice of Google to accommodate him.

URGENT AGENDA weighs in with some collected comments about the Canonization of Saint Obambi. Apparently an increasing number of folks are finding it just a bit creepy.

Obama -- rhetorical heights so content-free he could be a public school curriculum.

Attention Laura, Rush, Sean, Ann and company:

MITT GETS IT

Why do so many politicians find the passion, and sink their teeth in the bread of sincerity and truth, only when they've dropped out of the race? I guess that tells us something about the consequences of putting oneself in that kind of pressure-cooker.

Anyhoo, Mitt got it, and while he was walking the plank he finally talked about a subject upon which he has been much too mute up till now. Words from his epilogue:

Today we are a nation at war. And Barack and Hillary have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on terror: They would retreat, declare defeat.

And the consequence of that would be devastating. It would mean attacks on America, launched from safe havens that would make Afghanistan under the Taliban look like child's play. About this, I have no doubt.

Now, I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, and finding and executing Osama bin Laden.

And I agree with him on eliminating Al Qaida and terror worldwide.

Now, if I fight on, in my campaign, all the way to the convention -- I want you to know, I've given this a lot of thought -- I'd forestall the launch of a national campaign and, frankly, I'd make it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win.

... in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

This isn't an easy decision. I hate to lose.

...I entered this race because I love America. And because I love America, in this time of war, I feel I have to now stand aside for our party and for our country.

I will continue to stand for conservative principles. I'll fight alongside you for all the things we believe in. And one of the things we believe in is that we cannot allow the next president of the United States to retreat in the face of evil extremism.

YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!




'Bye.

SUPER-DUPER POOPER-SCOOPER
SHROVE TUESDAY PANCAKE-DAY
(Updated)

This is getting so painful. It appears increasingly that Republicans will have to choose between General McScrooge, the Rev. Elmer Gumtree, and a corporate C3PO [heavy on the robot data and way light on the charm]. This will be a "take your medicine -- eat your peas" election.

Or not. There's always the option of doing the rug-rat's lock-jaw thing, and flat-out refusing to take a bite of anything. Does your tummy sit and rumble? Or does it risk a big hurl?

Take your pick.

ROMNEY
There has always been something about him that I don't "buy" -- the more I see of him, the more I realize that no amount of exposure permits you to know him in any meaningful way. Then there's this:



Or this, from a reader of one of the NRO blogs last night:

Mitt is an achingly conventional candidate...Conventional is a sure loser. Mitt Romney is the least dynamic, most programmed, and most conventional canddiate I've ever seen run for any office in any year. Therefore, he cannot win.

From Mitt's Vietnam Flip-flop: His Most Disturbing Yet by Deroy Murdock:

[He told the] Boston Globe last June 24. “I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam.” ...from May 2, 1994. “I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam,” Romney told the Boston Herald.

...for Romney to somersault on something so personal — his own non-involvement in the Vietnam War — makes one wonder if Romney is any different from an exterior set on a Hollywood back lot: Clean and pretty in the front and all flat, plywood planks in the back.

ON THE OTHER HAND.... MCCAIN
...the man who represents the only real hope that my two military kids and all their confreres won't be left without food and ammo, running around with a giant target on their backs.

From The McCain Mirage by Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online.

Sen. McCain suggests no strategy for winning the wider war. He talks about fighting radical Islam, but he doesn’t evince much understanding of radical Islam — he seems to think, like the Bush administration, that it can be democratized into submission.

This is the strategy of the Clinton years and the second Bush term: Islam is the religion of peace, and democracy conquers all. It is not a strategy for victory, but McCain appears fully bought-in. His record conveys little indication that he grasps the inevitable connection between the dominance of Islam in a region and the sustenance of radical Islamic action in that region. Indeed, in 1999, against the tide of conservative (and much other sensible) opposition, he tried to push the Clinton administration into a ground war in Kosovo, despite the absence of any vital American interests. He thought it would enhance our image in the world to show solidarity with Muslims — never mind that these Muslims included anti-Western fundamentalists.

Domestically, watch and learn:



Not to mention that General McScrooge is notoriously vengeful and vindictive over the merest of perceived personal slights, like f'rinstance having it pointed out to him that he has changed a number of major positions (or is at least pretending to) and that he flat-out lied about Romney's alleged support of a timetable for troop withdrawal.

AND LAST, AND MOST CERTAINLY LEAST, HUCKABEE
Like the old TV ad used to say, "I can't believe we ate the whole thing" -- I can't believe a substantial chunk of the American electorate has taken this sanctimonious, over-rehearsed, intellectual featherweight seriously for one minute. And now he's gunning for the vice-presidency. If there is a God (and I believe it, no thanks to Rev. Huckabee), please, let this little man just go away.

Still, in our culturally impoverished era, we're told that Huckabee is the candidate with "wit"--




Lordy.

TWO THREE REASONS WHY WE HAVE TO STAY THE COURSE:

Self-embedded reporter Michael Totten (please hit the Pay-Pal button) files from Fallujah, where peace has broken out among the rubble, and the citizens have learned to care. Do not desert them -- any of them. A Marine speaks:

“I was lucky enough three weeks ago to go back to Karmah,” he said. “And my Iraqi Police were still there. The same guys from last year. As soon as I came into the station and they saw me they started jumping around, dancing, and yelling. There are four brothers who are all Iraqi Police at the Karmah station. One of the brothers was on shift when I got there. That night he called his brothers and his father – his father is a tribal leader – and they all came in the next day. Their father wanted to meet me.”

He choked up again slightly and had to pull himself together. “So…there's a lot more to this mission,” he said. “If you go into everything with an open mind, you can take so many lessons out of this mission, not only with community policing and the mission at hand, but with human relationships in general.”

I had heard this before. Maybe the majority of Americans who work closely with Iraqis feel something like this. Despite the corruption. Despite the incompetence. Despite the fact that some of them act like a bunch of third graders. The Iraqis really are brave, even if it doesn't look that way sometimes from far away or even up close. They are fighting for their survival in ways most Americans can barely imagine. Their enemy is possibly the most ferocious group of indigenous killers in the entire history of Mesopotamia. “We’ve actually become attached to these people on a personal level,” Army Colonel John Charlton said to me in Ramadi last summer. “We feel responsible for their safety. We’re concerned about what will happen to our Iraqi friends if we don’t succeed in this country.”

Commentor and Iraq veteran John writes at BobKrumm.com:

I am sorry, but after 8 years of supporting the war and saying that the War in Iraq is the most important part of the agenda, and ignoring Bush’s surrenders on immigration and his big spending, the conservative media’s McCain rage doesn’t have much credibility with me.

If being pro-immigration is that bad, why did they support Bush? If McCain Feingold is so horrible, why did they let Bush off the hook for signing it? Yes Yes I know the war. Well, if the war was so important in 2004, why isn’t it important now? Why are they now willing to sit out and elect Obama or Clinton and watch them surrender when it was so important in 2004?

Are conservatives really going to sit out and let a pro surrender candidate win the Whitehouse after claiming for the last five years that Iraq and the war on terror are the most important issues of our time? Do they really care that little about the country? Is the idea to punish the country for having the nerve not to nominate someone who meets your ideological purity test?

Given a choice between a center left McCain Presidency that wins in Iraq, versus a leftist Clinton or Obama Presidency that loses in Iraq, I will take McCain every time, even if the alternative produces right wing paradise in 2012. People every day risk and give their lives for success in Iraq. As a veteran I risked my life in Iraq. Now conservatives want even bother to vote to ensure victory there because doing so might involve voting for someone they don’t like.

Yeah, that is real culture of sacrifice for you. Were you guys just lying when you said that Iraq was so important? If conservatives are willing to sit out this election and let Clinton win and make all of the sacrifices in Iraq go for nothing, they can all go to hell as far as I am concerned.

FINALLY:
Just to keep things in perspective, let's give an ear to David Warren's Ash Wednesday piece for the Ottawa Citizen, on the use of mentally retarded women to blow up two Baghdad markets this week. The gist:

As the father of a Down's child myself, I can tell you just how innocent they are, and how loving. God made them without guile, and utterly in need of our protection. And in return for that demand upon our decency (Down's children in Canada today are usually aborted), He made them a light in this world. O Lord.

My friend, who told me to write about this, is himself a man with long experience working for people with mental disabilities. He told me I had to write about this case, because it was the final abomination. He said, “we should have an international day of mourning.” He said, “I give up my membership in the human race if these Al Qaeda terrorists are human.”

We are about to elect the leader of the (at the moment) free world, the last remaining superpower, the last best hope, perhaps the "forlorn hope" to stem the tide of jihadist insanity now doing its best to "assimilate" (Borg-like) the infidel world. And the candidates keep talking about global warming and universal teat-access for the flabby and prosperous American public.

Spare us, O Lord.

Graciously hear us, O Lord.

Miserere nobis.

THIS COULD MEAN THE END FOR HILLARY



Oh man, my head hurts.....



I've got three (or maybe five) words for these people:

AIR CANADA IS PLEASED TO SERVE YOU....

The Drudge Report points to this fine moment in the history of Canada's premiere airline.

THIS IS YOUR PILOT SPEAKING... AND CRYING AND SWEARING. AND DEMANDING TO TALK TO GOD!

How's it goin', eh?

KATZ OUT OF THE BAG:
MORE WISE WORDS FROM URGENT AGENDA

Barack Obama has an idea...he wants to organize a Muslim summit....'Muslim and Western leaders would be invited to the summit for "a discussion about how we can prevent the widening misunderstandings and gaps between the Muslim world and the West.'

Can't you just wait for the photo ops? President Obama with some leader whose followers chop off heads. President Obama trying to "understand" why women have to be beaten. And, naturally, President Obama hearing, from all of them, that the real problem in the world is Israel.

...This just in: Jimmy Carter is quoted as being wild about Barack Obama. If I were Mr. Obama, I'd advise Mr. Carter to devote his time to silent meditation. Real silent.

IT'S DOG EAT DOG


Like most Republicans, I can't exactly rejoice. I'm still recovering from Fred taking a powder about three days after I sent him a hundred bucks. Giuliani has probably been my first choice on sheer political considerations -- i.e., he fears no man (nor woman) and could pretty much chew up and spit out anything or anybody that gets in the Great American Face -- something we've been lacking for a couple of decades.

He too is retiring from the field of battle, having tested the theory that sensible Americans would not allow themselves to be cheated of the full menu of candidates just because eleven people in Iowa rejected some and boosted others -- ditto New Hampshire, where the numbers must rise to at least four score and seven.

Without an incumbent Prez or Veep on either ticket for the first time in what seems like eons, the deep flaws in our eccentric primary/caucus system have revealed themselves, made all the worse by the Democrat-driven front-loading of this year's process, in the name of the Virtual Presidency of the Annointed (see here , scroll to "the Hillary thing") .

The alarums and laments about a likely McCain candidacy, and a rather less likely McCain victory, have begun, and they are compelling. National Review Online carries the best of them, here last night in the immediate aftermath, and this morning in a small symposium. I have said I could live with him, but he was third down the list of people I could live with. He was my guy in 2000 -- and then I got to know him better. Now, not so much....

Oy.


IN THE LADIES' ROOM

By far the most comical response to recent political developments was the New York Chapter of the National Organization of Women crying foul that Massachusetts Senator Ted "the swimmer" Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama, thereby perpetrating the "greatest betrayal" of women and their feminist cause. [h/t: Breitbart.com]

Ex-squeeze me? Let me get this straight-- feminists feel
betrayed because someone declines to support a woman who has (1) sat passively by, riding her husband's political coat-tails and rising to the senate on no merit of her own, while that same husband has groped, seduced, splattered, and likely raped a series of mostly vulnerable women (Canada's Belinda Strumpet not so much); and who has (2) actively joined with that same husband in dismissing, denigrating, harassing, and destroying those women, all in the pursuit of more and more political power and glory.

And furthermore (let me get this straight again) -- the "someone" who has declined to support this political womanbot on her quest for power is a man who emotionally wrecked a perfectly nice wife while fulfilling the family tradition of chasing every piece of tail in sight, including the sole act by which he ever exceeded the other Kennedy males at anything, that being the negligent, if not deliberate, homicide of Mary Jo Kopechne, who floated in an air pocket in his overturned car at Chappaquiddick for at least two hours before drowning, while Ted rested his sore back in a hotel room.

And endorsing Obama constitutes betrayal.

Okay.


AND IN THE NEXT STALL...

The Breck Girl, John Edwards, announces his departure from the race this morning.

I believe I spotted his empty suit in my rear-view mirror.



'BYE.



Good thing he's so rich he won't need to find a job.

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

Senator John F(ing) Kerry, October 2006

No bright young individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment.

Senator Charles Rangel, November 2006


How one such ignorant loser of my acquaintance spends some of his down-time at Al Asad air base:

I've also plowed through several books, since they're a great way to burn hours during duty or on a slow work day. On the way over here, I read Steven Pressfield's The Afghan Campaign (actually I blew through that one on the plane ride over, since it was a very very long plane ride), a fictional account of an infantryman in Alexander the Great's army during his marches through modern-day Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and back through Iraq (interesting historical footnote: Kandahar in Afghanistan, which you may of heard about on the news as an American base, was actually founded by Alexander and named after himself. Originally it was called Iskandahar, with the "Isk" being the local language bastardizing "Alex". There is another city with a similar name - Iskandariya - in southern Iraq near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates).

I also finished Thieves of Baghdad, an account of the looting of the Baghdad National Museum after the initial invasion and the efforts of a Marine colonel to recover the stolen artifacts while dispelling the many falsehoods about the looting perpetrated by a lazy media. Great book: it's part Indiana Jones, part CSI, and part Black Hawk Down all in one. Once my wife sent me a small selection from my library, I went through Bernard Lewis' The Muslim Discovery of Europe, an Arab-eye's-view from primary sources about the contact and conflict of the Muslim world from its creation to its decline with its European, Christian adversaries.

I've started the first volume of Plutarch's Lives (as part of a trip through ancient history I've assigned myself, beginning with Herodotus and working its way through the Persian Wars, Peloponnesian War, and now the decline of Greece combined with the ascension of Rome), as well as Triumph Foresaken, the first of a new two-volume history of the Vietnam War written by a current professor at the Marine Corps University who seeks to correct much of the "conventional wisdom" about that conflict that is, based on a review of recently released primary sources, quite often factually wrong. I'm almost done Victor Davis Hanson's The Soul of Battle, a review of three generals from different eras - Epaminondas from ancient Greece, Sherman from the Civil War, and Patton from WWII - and how they imbued the ideologies they personally held into their troops, thereby giving them victory in three different wars of liberation.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I educated myself on global warming - its myths, its facts, its actual effects, and the most efficient way of combating those effects - with Cool It. I'm also keeping up my science fiction fetish: I read A.E. van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher, a story sort of about a 2nd Amendment society with an all-powerful empress whose might can be checked by ordinary citizens who can purchase highly-advanced firearms from private gun shops. And, I'm re-reading an oldie I went through long ago, Frank Herbert's The Dosadi Experiment, a tale about a twisted social engineering experiment on a planet whose inhabitants are not allowed to escape...until now. And I'd be remiss if I forgot to mention The Real Festivus, sent me by my parents, written by the Seinfeld screen-writer whose real-life family tradition inspired that famous episode.

It's amazing what you find when you take the lid off the jarhead and have a peek inside.

Also amazing how much a warrior can get done ONCE THE WAR IS PRETTY MUCH WON.

REPUBLICAN POLITICAL MATH 101:


OTHER RANDOM THEOREMS AND EQUATIONS:

HUCKABEE minus 100 lbs. = No longer a mile wide,
but still an inch deep.


"OH YOU TWO! --- JUST BEE-HAAAAVE!!!"



"Uh, excuse me -- there are THREE people in this debate. Call on me? I got my hand up! Over here -- yoo-hoo -- teacher?!"

Hardball's CHRIS MATTHEWS -- LITERARY COMEDIAN

Definitely one of the week's funniest unwitting howlers. Chris Matthews made his public mea culpa for saying what so many of us are thinking (I guess the old saw about politicians also applies to journalists: the definition of a "gaffe" is when a politician accidentally tells the truth). Shooting from the lip as usual, Matthews opined that the only way Hillary Clinton got into the senate was on the sympathy generated because her husband "messed around".

He was wrong, as it happens -- far more than her husband's misconduct, Mrs. Clinton owes her seat to Rudy Giuliani's prostate. (He got cancer and missed his opportunity to wipe the floor with Hillary in the New York senate race.)

However, Matthews was forced to do the apology dance, and did it with the "I was right but I didn't mean to be hurtful" contortion to which we have become accustomed. Toward the end, bursting in with a patriotism-distracter, Matthews spoke of

...our uniquely American hope that we can actually make things better, that we can make the greatest of countries, not only survive, but as [author] William Faulkner once said, 'prevail'.

William Faulkner? WILLIAM FAULKNER said we should prevail???? Not General Petraeus? Not Ike Eisenhower? Not even John McCain?

Please, Chris, please -- don't reach so far, don't bend so low, for God's sake don't hurt yourself. It's such a long, LONG way to go to be SAFE. It's such a deep, DEEP dive to take to demonstrate what an utter coward you are.

Chris Matthews -- faithful foot-soldier in the Oxford Mississippi militia, picking off our enemies one minie-ball and paper cartridge at a time.


SPEAKING OF VIOLENT JOURNALISTS

The New York Times has once again distinguished itself doing violence to the truth, and assault and battery on the American military, through a shoddily-constructed, grossly distortionate hit piece called Across America: Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles, a predicably stuck-in-Vietnam story of screwed-up veterans wreaking mayhem on their fellow-citizens back home.

It would have been ho-hum had it not been so heinously context-free, recounting as it did the 121 known killers out of the more than half-a-million troops who have rotated in and out of Iraq (more if we factor in Afghanistan] -- while failing to note that this represents a rate of 24.2 homicidal offenders per 100,000, which is lower than the U.S. national average in a similar age bracket (18-24) -- that being 27 per 100,000 for 2006. Oh, yes, and lower still than the rate during those peaceable early Clinton years, which peaked at 43 per 100,000.


Noting the importance of this kind of investigative probe into murder trends by population sub-group, Iowahawk immediately got on the case, and tracked the criminal tendencies of professional journalists.

Whoa, Nelly!

Alarums and Excursions!

What he found!

Bottom line: If someone approaches you on the street holding a microphone, put your hands up in a hurry, and insist that they show you whether it's LOADED.