TILLER THE BABY-KILLER
GUNNED DOWN IN CHURCH

Now there's a headline for the ages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you so much, idiot.

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

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


FLOTUS: NO CHEAP DATE

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

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

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

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

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

All that without bothering to put on a tie.

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

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


A LITTLE CONFECTION FOR CATHOLICS
SUFFERING FROM BAD MUSIC:

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


GUARANTEED TO SOUR YOUR SUNDAE!!

IT'S BLAND!

IT'S FRUITY!

IT'S OOZING WITH SACCHARINE!!!



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

THE ULTIMATE INDULGENCE!

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

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

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

BUT I CAN PLAY ONE ON TV


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

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

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

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




Pretty tight there...












OOPS! Wouldn't want to intrude there!









Looks pretty Sar-Cozy... Awkward!


Who let Laughing-Boy in?



Oh, naff off, the pack of you.

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


Not amused. Ipod or no ipod.

OVER AT MY ALTER-EGO BLOG:

News round-up at SUMMA CONTRA IMPROBOS ET PLUMBEOS

Among the headlines:

Separated at birth -- Roseanne Barr & Sonia Sotomayor:















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

MEMORIAL DAY, U.S.A.

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

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


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


Dear Mr. President, and representatives all:

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

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

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



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

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

Maybe we can start with
INTERNMENT CAMPS


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

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

Been there -- done that: 1942-46


Chains we can believe in?


And then there was....

FUN WITH DICK AND JANE

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

So do as you're told and read it.

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

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


So, see it this way:












Or this way:


But SEE it. It's not going away.

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

BAD CASE OF THE [SOUTH]BENDS

OBAMA DOES THE DAME



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheer, cheer for New Notre Dame?

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

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

ALL THOMAS, ALL THE TIME.







Well, almost all the time.

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

MULTIPLE HANKY ALERT!!!!!

[hat-tip Gateway Pundit]

COMING TO A SUPERMARKET NEAR YOU????

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

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

Is anybody in charge of anything over there?




Think twice before you reach for those matzohs.


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

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

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

"WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER."

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


[hat-tip/ Flypaper]


LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

CHENEY REDUX?

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

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

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

TEA

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRIDUUM




Tonight begins the High Holidays of Christianity, known as the Triduum, or Three Day sequence (Thursday night to Friday night -- Friday night to Saturday night -- Saturday night to Sunday dawn) of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Holy Thursday = Last Supper, Betrayal & Arrest in Gethsemane, Denial & Trial

Good Friday = Trial, Torture, Mocking, Execution, Death, Burial

Holy Saturday = Hiding and Fear on earth, Harrowing and Liberation in Limbo

Easter Sunday = Resurrection, Revelation to Mary Magdalene, Reunion

Tonight at Holy Thursday Mass the Catholic Church celebrates the institution of two sacraments: the Eucharist (the transubstantiated meal of the Body and Blood) and Holy Orders (the ordained priesthood).

Tonight I will be celebrating in my own way at a church where, in the Catholic understanding, neither of these sacraments is present.

I believe I mentioned, lo, these two years or so ago, what I called The Great Choir Massacre of '07, with the promise that I would tell the story. I have never been able to make myself do that, because it remained (and remains) too painful, or at least too exhausting.

Fear not -- by "massacre" I do not mean that anyone died. Just that there was a violent rupture in my religious practice, and in my relationship of trust and friendship with a community of priests, via the dissolution of a choir and its replacement by an unwelcome, unexplained, and so far unsuccessful new musical regime. Something died, but it was not coporeal.

Recovery from this rupture was slow, and so far incomplete. If recovery means forgiveness that may be achieved -- if it means forgetting, well, it is hard to "unknow" unpleasant and unlooked-for truths and disillusionments about people.

The dissolved choir went in various directions, and after the reverberations of shock had subsided, re-formed itself for seasonal gigs in other places, much appreciated by nursing home residents and others.

For myself, as long as the actual music, collected in six different binders and comprising a repertoire of some 500 works, was stuffed away where I couldn't see it, I began to manage my emotions (with a little pharmaceutical help!) and get back to an even keel on this tender subject. But the minute the music comes out, in preparation for one of our independent gigs, I am overcome, sick with sadness and longing for that deepest of spiritual engagements I was fortunate (and always grateful) to have experienced for seven years.

Last Easter we (the spousal unit and I, he not being a choir member but a fan of the former regime) bolted to Texas to experience an entirely new and different Triduum, out of the environment where we would feel the vacuum so acutely. This Easter, for tonight at least, we go our separate ways -- he to some Catholic Mass or other not at our parish (if "our" parish it still is -- it often doesn't feel that way), and I deprive myself of the Catholic observance altogether by singing for the Anglicans.

Well, I suppose it isn't an "altogether" insofar as the music we will sing -- treasures of the Counter-Reformation and Flemish Renaissance, amongst others -- are entirely Catholic in origin but under-appreciated in too many Catholic churches of the modern age. For me, tonight, there will be no genuine priests presiding, nor genuine Eucharist to partake in, but a schismatic parody thereof, however sincere may be the Christian philosophy of the congregation. So this will be Holy Thursday intra cor meum -- in my heart -- lifted by the music I have ached to sing, and which had come nearly to define the Triduum for me -- certainly to have enriched it more intensely than I had ever known before.

There are times when I can hardly believe I was so privileged as to spend my Easter singing these works. Perhaps the day will come again, in my own church, surrounded by my friends again. Cum dolore langueo.

Just before going into Holy Week Mode:
my final spew-forth on that perennial subject,

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD
AS WE KNOW IT

More reviews on "LARA ANTIPOVA
and People's Commander STRELNIKOV
doing the GRAND TOUR -- Part Deux"

[1] WHY I LOVE THE KRAUTHAMMER

Dr. K. assesses the Amerikka Suxx tour with his customary aplomb and deftly planted poignards. My favourite bit:

Obama says, "In America there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world."

...It's hard to appreciate an entity's leading role in the world when it's been sucking on your tit for 60 years, as Europe has...

[h/t Gateway Pundit]


[2] JAMES LEWIS AT AMERICAN THINKER
has been doing some THINKIN' about it.

We know that Obama has a very conventional mind. I have not heard a single novel or even interesting idea from the man over all the months that I've listened to him. He clearly has no understanding of classical economics. He doesn't understand, as Bill Clinton did, the real harm and suffering that welfare dependency has inflicted on black people after LBJ's War on Poverty. He does not understand the elementary difference between productive and non-productive investment of scarce resources. He has no conception of the damage inflicted by inflation on the poor, more than even on the rest of the country. He has no real understanding of the dizzying complexities of foreign policy -- nor does his Secretary of State, who was hardly picked for her competence in foreign affairs.

These are not just rank amateurs, they are willfully ignorant amateurs, who also happen to be grandiose narcissists, and who now have free reign over the levers of power in the United States. We are all watching the Titanic steaming full speed ahead right before that diamond-hard iceberg tears off all the steel rivets from her skin. If you're not aghast, you're just not paying attention.

[h/t Hugh Hewitt]


[3] OVER AT URGENT AGENDA, WILLIAM KATZ
weighs in with these observations about the foreign follies of our "apprentice president":

I'm reminded of something that George Shultz, President Reagan's secretary of state, once said: "Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table." The president should mount that quote on his desk. Throughout the trip he has appeared more the neophyte than the leader, more the apprentice than the president.

His trip came at a moment when the Pentagon is preparing widely publicized budget cuts. It came at a moment when the phrase, "the war on terror," has been dropped from administration vocabulary. It came at a moment when the administration flashes "weakness" rather than strength. And, of course, the president spent an embarrassing amount of time this last week apologizing for America's sins, real or imagined, mostly imagined. There was no shadow of power. There was only the shadow of a kid playing in the sandbox.

[4] ULTIMATE POLITICAL ANIMAL, DICK MORRIS
does some niggling over small matters of American Law and Constitutional Tradition, as recently blown to smithereens by the itinerant president: "Obama Just Repealed the Declaration of Independence" (picky picky picky, Dick!)




[5] JOHN HINDERAKER AT POWERLINE
asks the obvious question:
"The Apology Tour: Will it Ever END?"


[6] CRAZY-AS-A-LOON NORTH KOREAN COMMIE DICTATOR launches big-ass missile --
Leader of the Free World bends over and assumes the position:

"Change: $8B for ACORN, while missile defense slashed $1.4B"


And a whole round-up of disturbing slaps upside the head from Gateway Pundit.

I'M NO GOOD AT MULTI-TASKING --
THERE'S TOO MUCH GOING ON,
IT'S COMING ON TOO FAST,
HOW DOES ONE ADDRESS THE AVALANCHE
OF HORRORS?...

Well, we could start with Michelle's sweaters.

She began promisingly enough, leaving Washington in what may be her best fashion experiment yet, the striking black and white suit with the graceful long coat.


But it all kind of went to pieces when she emerged at the other end with her knees poking out from under another one of these peculiar shades of mustard, covered by a faux medieval surcoat. Bleah.


Then the parade of the sweaters began.

First was the demure little black on white number, which was lovely in its way, but more like an elementary school-marm's daily outfit than anybody's idea of the proper dress for meeting the Queen -- or, in Michelle's case, groping the Queen.

Yes, the palace issued calming re-assurances that no protocols were demolished by Mrs. Obama's unprecedented effrontery and violation of the most basic norms of British royalty etiquette. In fact, it was pointed out that the Queen returned the favour. Yeah.

Memo to Michelle's Social Secretary: the Queen has good manners, and 80 years of experience encountering the public. Her token half-lift of a closed-fisted arm was her way of covering for her crass guest, having more respect for the visitors than they had for her.

Reminded me of the wondrous Calpurnia [the Queen, not Michelle], housekeeper to Atticus Finch and the young'ns, who took Scout to task when she drew attention to Walter Cunningham's over-use of syrup on his dinner. Hissed Calpurnia, "That boy's yo' comp'ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear!" The Queen and Calpurnia knew how to treat people, even when they "commit solecisms that society would never pardon."

You don't touch the Queen. Them's the rules. Even if you tower over her and she looks so cute and helpless down there. She's not any such thing. And she'll still be on her throne when Mr. and Mrs. Chicago Way have been shown the exit door from D.C.

Other sweaters followed, the cute, the weird and ugly, all just peculiarly inappropriate to the image of the First Lady. Jackie Kennedy wouldn't have gone out to walk the dog in any of them.














Why am I fixating on this? Because it's easier than coming to grips with the sheer madness and horror being perpetrated on Mr. Obama's seduced, mocked, and abandoned mistress, the United States of America.

BARACK AND MICHELLE'S MOST EXCELLENT EXECRABLE ADVENTURE

--or--

LARA ANTIPOVA AND PEOPLE'S COMMANDER STRELNIKOV DO THE GRAND TOUR

What can one say about the first president in American history to go abroad to a major international gathering and (you should pardon the expression) sell the country down the river?

Oh yes, he gave lip service to tsk-tsking Europe for failing to live up to any decent standard of participation (gratitude?) expected of their privileged comfort-status (gift of the U.S.A.?) within the world community to beat back the scourge of Islamofascism. But what most of his slavering anti-American audience came away with was the admission the the big bad U.S. is a big bad bully that went haywire in Iraq and tortured tens of thousands of people in Guantanamo.

Speaking of "lip service", the Great One's teleprompter appears to have been suffering from jet-lag, and failed him noticeably at one of his Big Speeches. Gateway Pundit [more and more my daily go-to guy] has the clip of one pregnant pause, but it's nothing compared to the painful silence after he uttered "liberté" because he couldn't come up with "egalité, fraternité" on his own, in his repugnant comparison of our respective national mantras -- despite Jefferson's spasm of theoretical fondness for the bloodshed of revolutions, I doubt he would have tolerated it if "life, lberty, and the pursuit of happiness" had been born in the shadow of Madame La Guillotine. (Slide forward to minute 6:40 -- the pause that refreshes...)



John Crace at the decidedly left-leaning U.K. Guardian seems to have noticed the Emperor's awkward nudity, and fisked his halting performance mercilessly. Enjoy.

I checked with TOTUS (Obama's Teleprompter's blog site) and it's not admitting anything about its obvious lapses (how arrogant!), but one of its commenters, called TruthWillWin, coined a wonderful moniker for the Big Guy: "Reader of the Free World." Heh.

What we saw there was the foreign policy equivalent of the coach of a far-and-away best hockey team [for instance, the 24-time Stanley Cup winning Montreal Canadiens] going to a league meeting and volunteering to only suit up a 14-year-old goalie with no helmet and bed-pillows for pads, just to make it "fair" for everybody else. Yeah, that will win friends and respect for your team. Not to mention inviting the Philadelphia Flyers to move in and break the kid's neck. Now THAT'S strategery.

President Obambi announced to his Strasbourg town hall audience that among his aims was to repair the supposedly "drifting" relationship between America and its NATO allies, and getting Europe to step up to the plate in the fight against terrorism. He announced that the G20 meeting was a success. That was a lie. Sweetness and Light sums up the scope of his abject failure to win over his European hosts.

Most egregious of all was his throw-away characterization of six years in which, through wrenching trial and considerable error, Iraq has been transformed into a functioning, genuinely multicultural if infant democracy through blood, toil, tears, and sweat of the American military and their families, as a misadventure upon which we got "SIDETRACKED."

How comforting, how encouraging for my son -- on the job seven days a week, housed in temporary shelters, flying through sand-storms, fixing to broil in the approaching summer, separated from his wife and child for months -- and he not having the worst of the experience by any means -- how wonderful to know that his Commander-in-Chief thinks all of this sacrifice has been for some giant oopsie on which the nation got "sidetracked." Shucks, shrugs Obama -- our bad.

Barack Obama's presidency has broken over the fruited plains like a giant shamal, bringing dirt, darkness, and disorientation, faster than anyone could ever have predicted. Those of us who opposed his election and saw through him from the start likely thought that we might reach this level of impatience, even disgust and outrage, with him in one or two years. That we are there after only two months is absolutely terrifying.

Here's another prediction: by the time the 2010 elections get into gear, if not before, appearances by the President or members of his party will periodically be met with mass demonstrations and calls of "traitor." Please, Mr. President, surprise me. Make it not so. [I LOVE this picture -- hat-tip Michelle Malkin]

In the last video that confirmed beyond doubt Osama Bin Laden's earthly existence [produced in November 2001, remember!] he uttered his famous horse metaphor: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." Fresh from his triumph on September 11, he was convinced (not without good reason) that America had shrunk into the weak horse.

However, he was in a cave in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time, and George Bush was in the process of replying with a horse metaphor of his own -- to quote Nicely Nicely Johnson, "I got the horse right here, his name is Paul Revere, and there's a guy that says if the weather's clear,
CAN DO!!!!"



We could, and we did, though it's true enough to say that we could have finished it up better. [Apparently there was too much argument in the war room about whether to put the bet on Epitaph or Valentine....] However, may I point out, what we did in Afghanistan in 2001 -- blow in, overthrow bad guys, put local government in place, set up election, blow out -- is EXACTLY what the Monday-morning quarterbacks in Washington and the newsrooms were saying we should have done in Iraq. I'm just sayin'....

In my quest for the "strong horse/weak" horse quote, I ran across a prescient speech made by columnist-to-the-world and boy genius Mark Steyn in Berkeley a couple of years ago, on the occasion of the 23rd annual Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial Lectureship in National Security Affairs. If you think the title's long, the lecture was 50 minutes, and the questions another 40 -- but it's worth every minute of your time to watch and listen. I provide it here as a public service. As they say in Mr. Steyn's home state of New Hampshire, Live Free or Die.
slams the door on a courageous and loyal Iraqi interpreter's bid to seek asylum (read: survival) in the United States. Nice.

Oh, and Wall Street teeters in continuing insecurity, taking only a mild breather while Barack the Obarometer of Doom is out of town, and Joe ("I wish I were as intelligent as the similarly-named plumber") the Creepy Veep is being kept marginalized and relatively quiet. Oh, and did I mention that President Obumsfeld is trying to fight another war on the cheap? So says the man who knows, Michael Yon.

Finally, America begins to see what it means to live under Mob Rule, as carefully illustrated by classical historian, California farmer, and increasingly pissed-off dude, Victor Davis Hanson.

If you're not scared of these folks, friends, and what the future under their domination holds for us all, you ought to be. It has indeed happened too fast -- I had thought that it would take at least six months or more to answer my fundamental question, has Obama been the user or the used?

Did he sit through the Rev. Wright's sermons, and write (if he did) the essentially racist roll-out of his early life in biography #1 because he really believed that stuff, or because he knew that pretending to do so would position him for the fast-track to political power? Is he the starry-eyed golden boy of master manipulators like Bill Ayers and the Chicago-way activists, who took one look at him and made him their child-star goose that would lead them to the golden egg of ultimate power? Or is he the master manipulator himself, who made a bee-line for the Windy City and its ruthless machine, and sought out the power brokers who could shoulder him along on the sedan-chair of dirty tricks to the mountain-top from whence he could roll out the Revolution?

I'm going for the latter -- it's only two months, and that's my final answer. On the one hand, he's NOT brilliant (no matter what Bill O'Reilly says) because unfortunately you don't have to be to hoodwink half the American electorate. And no one who is brilliant would have made such a headlong amateurish hash of his first 30 days, nor would he believe the utter crap philosophy to which the man adheres. And he is both an ignoramous about world history, and nothing short of a fool on foreign policy.

But he does have cunning, and he is a hardcore leftist ideologue who will stop at nothing to achieve his transformation of Amerikka. And he is, by the way, a garden-variety Chicago-way political thug.

"I won."

"Don't think we're not keeping score, brother."

"My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

He won the votes (though he bought some of them with illegal money) and he certainly won the war for media attention and advocacy -- nobody held a gun to the mainstream media's heads and forced them into their slobbering obsession with him. I had no desire to hate him, and to tumble into a dose of Obama Derangement Syndrome. When he began rebuilding the Clinton administration I thought he was at least wise enough to know that he was in over his head. Silly me. I underestimated his raw arrogance. He is a dangerous man, and there will be hell to pay in some form or other. Right now, I can only think of one thing to advise him -- to beg him, even.

[Salty language alert -- ladies, avert your eyes.]

Or if you can't quite handle that, there's always this:

Semper Fi, but nearly FUBAR.