AL GORE GOES THROUGH [CLIMATE] CHANGE OF LIFE:

CHILLS, NIGHT SWEATS, THERMOMETER GONE MAD

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.

So said the inconveniently-named poet Robert Frost. Recently-minted poet lariat of Global Warmitude, former Ameriveep Al Gore, has been having Settled Science Hot Flashes of late.

First there was the earth's core -- he announced on television that we could use the geothermal energy of the earth to heat our homes because a few kilometers down below the surface, it's "millions of degrees". [hat-tip: infowars.com]

NOT.

Then today at the Hopenhagen Global Hot Air Festival, the mano-pausal perfesser claimed that "fresh science" claimed that the polar ice cap would be completely gone in about five years -- and he backed up this "settled science" with the research of one Dr. Wieslav Maslowski, who, as it turns out, is an unsettled scientist who says it ain't quite so.

AWKWARD!!!

Poor old Al. It's all coming apart on him: East Anglian perfidy, snowflakes in Pensacola, inconvenient facts slapping him in the chops.

We've seen him breathing fire:


We've seen him glaring ice:



We may yet see him have that nervous breakdown he's been working on since 2000.

We'll give the Poet Laureate the last word:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Br-r-r-r-r. Hot flash would feel good right about now, huh, Al?

GAUDETE SUNDAY

Advent -- the season of joyful waiting, of self-examining preparation, of cleansing breaths and calming of the mind.

We're three weeks into it and I've barely begun. For me, in order to tap into the spirit of Advent, and of the other liturgical seasons, I must now rely heavily upon memories of more spiritually charged days gone by.

What the choir would have sung today, were there still a Sunday choir in my life:



Rejoice.

Just do it.

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY -- AND I REALLY WANTED TO KNOW
WHAT THE WEATHER'S LIKE IN DARWIN, AUSTRALIA

American Thinker chooses today to link to the graphs that say it all about "homogenized" data on the Global Warmitude Hoax. I feel so special.

See two versions of what you feel when you stick your finger into the wind, depending on whether you are motivated to "Hide the Decline".

EPA (Environmental Poppycock Agency)
DECLARES CARBON DIOXIDE TO BE A POLLUTANT

Americans (and sheep everywhere), get ready for your new National Anthem [as composed and performed -- irony alert -- by the Police]:








































EXHAUSTIVE COVERAGE OF HOLLYWOOD'S SELF-LOATHING PSEUDO-HISTORIAN-OF-CHOICE
-- HOWARD ZINN'S PEOPLE'S HISTORY, COMING TO A CLASSROOM NEAR YOU

Andrew Breitbart at Big Hollywood covers this wall-to-wall. (Especially pertinent: "Stage Right's" observation about A Nation of Starf%*#kers).

Is our children learning?

We report, you decide.

Dear Leader Zinn's Department of Education:


American Thinker has more on the subject of worship of vacuuous Hollywood glam-bams (yes, that's the Viggo up there, flipping the peace sign like a 50-year-old undergraduate, with scholastic luminaries like Matt Damon and Josh Brolin) and other high-profile clouds of liberal vapor, in George Joyce's comment on a new essay by philosopher Roger Scruton.

Scruton's name came up on a 2007 American Thinker essay, as one who has distilled the phenomenon of modern self-loathing -- the seminal ingredient in the Howard Zinn pedagogy. Scruton coined a Greek neologism, "oikophobia", and defined it for all our use in this speech to the Vlaams Belang, a large Belgian political party contemplating Flemish secession.

I once watched a tv biography of Howard Zinn, and my predominant reaction was how close in circumstances was his father's arrival in America compared to my grandfather's -- and I just kept scratching my head as to how by the next generation the achievements of immigrant parents managed, in the Zinn family, to translate into such profound loathing and slander of the land that gave them a home. True enough, most of my grandfather's sons and descendants grew up to take a liberal view of politics and society (my dad was the exception), but in this Zinn boy we see a genuine pathological obsession. It's just so odd.

I don't know if Howard Zinn has ever enthusiastically praised anything, but his approach to American history was neatly distilled by W.S. Gilbert, in the voice of his Lord High Executioner, about "the idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone/ all centuries but this, and every country but his own."


EXHAUSTIVE COVERAGE OF OBAMA'S LATEST CZAR FAIL

KEVIN JENNINGS: SO-FIST-ICATED LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE

I don't really even want to write anything specific about this guy, because the words and the facts and the damage make cringe and feel queasy. I'll leave it to the Czar-Toppling Whistleblower-in-Chief, Jim Hoft over at the indispensible Gateway Pundit. Read it and weep.



Gateway also give us our laugh of the day: in an interview with Foreign Policy Magazine, former Czech President Vaclav Havel sees Barack Obama's "wee-wee'd up" and raises him poop-in-the-pants, on the subject of standing one's ground on the international political stage. Read it and wet.


MORE ON THAT CARBON DIOXIDE THING:

A WORLD OF ASH


Every so often there's a book that makes you do something stupid, like read it straight through until 4:30 in the morning. I've just finished doing that with Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. I decided to read it because I had decided to see the movie (opening last week, starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee). And, having read Rick Groen's review in the Globe and Mail, I decided that I'd prefer to take the "Biblical cadences" with me into the theatre if they weren't going to be there from the screen.

I'll admit it -- I'm a fan of the Viggo, and have watched not a few weak movies based on his strong appearance in them. He came to my attention, of course, as Lord Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, though I realized at the time how unexpectedly he had previously commanded my attention in Witness, in which he had no lines! -- as well as other films in which he had floated memorably at the margins: Carlito's Way, Crimson Tide.

I skipped seeing what turned out to be his first Oscar-nominated role (who knew? I wasn't paying any attention) in Eastern Promises, because it was another work by the icky-creepy David Cronenberg, who did everything in his ghoul's bag'o'tricks to undermine both the good acting and the strands of significance in his earlier History of Violence. [I waxed eloquent, voluminous, and theological on what that film could have been about in more adept hands, here.] I'll probably break down and rent Eastern Promises, now that I know it was Oscar meat.

I've read one review of The Road which makes the correct point that the most dominant image in the book is that of the ubiquitous presence of ash. And the film is criticized, at its most basic, for failing to work with that image -- for an inexplicable paucity of ash.

If that's the case, I'm disappointed already, because while reading the book I couldn't shake that image -- an image burned into the consciousness of anyone who was watching the news on a September morning about eight years ago.


In McCarthy's book, the particular apocalyptic event which is catalyst to the narrative is not described, so the reader can't be sure whether it was a natural or (as the current Secretary of Homeland Security likes to call them) a man-made disaster. The few trickles of backstory McCarthy allows lean towards an indication that some sort of nuclear-weapon event is the likely cause, but the ambiguity permits one to concentrate on the more weighty themes of familial love, hope, endurance, and grace, rather than on geo-political questions and their partisan implications. This is entirely to the good.

It is to be hoped that the Viggo, famous for his noodle-headed pronouncements about the political implications of Lord of the Rings, will keep to himself any cause-and-effect relationships he might see between the story of The Road and the Evil Bush/Cheney Conspiracy, which is still getting under his skin even as his retires his 'Kucinich for President' bumper sticker.

For if there is any parallel which suggests itself, it has to be that vision of the world of ash which was created in 2001, across a limited number of city blocks, where fires raged for just 100 days, but which opened a wound that has yet to heal.

If we have reason to fear that the global firestorm and the world of ash will some day cover a wider horizon than one corner of Manhattan, it will not be because there was a show of 'cowboy' strength under a war-mongering Bush administration, but because there has been a dumbfounding roll-out of deliberate postures of weakness, hopping from one nation to another, on the part of the Obama government.
































I find it impossible, for even a moment, to contemplate a world of ash without thinking of Manhattan on September 11, and Beirut before, and London, Madrid, Mumbai, and Bali since, wondering where the ashes will fall next. Still, that is a political scenario grounded in pragmatism rather than grace, and it should take a backseat when considering the virtues of The Road, on film and on the page.


Having gotten all this off my chest, I will look forward to watching the film in the penitential spirit of Advent, which is now upon us.

Not a 'feel-good holiday movie hit', to be sure, but then the holidays are not yet upon us -- so I'm making it an Advent project, remembering that the definition of the Holy Spirit is the Love between the Father and the Son, and therein hangs the tale.



IN WHAT SEEMS LIKE A MINOR FOOTNOTE...

The President has laid out his new, new Afghan strategy in an evening speech, using the cadets of West Point as his wallpaper.

Let's review the chronology:

--March 27, 2009 -- Obama announces his "new comprehensive strategy" for Afghanistan and Pakistan [based, we now know, on the Bush administrations complete review of the situation undertaken in 2008 and kept classified, at the request of the incoming Obama administration]

--May 2009 -- Obama appoints Gen. Stanley McChrystal to replace Gen. David McKiernan as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, less than a year into the latter's term of command.

--August 2009 -- Gen. McChrystal submits a 66-page report to Sec-Def Gates requesting 40,000 more troops, but the request is held back from being officially submitted to the President in order to allow him more time to tread water before dog-paddling in a discernibly forward direction.

--September 2009 -- Gen. McChrystal is finally permitted to make his request for 40,000 additional troops, with the scuttlebutt saying that he will resign if denied the necessary resources.

--December 1 2009 -- Obama lectures the West Point cadets, and the nation, about his plans to send 75% of the troops their general requested, to do all the do-gooder stuff they can accomplish, and to haul them out in 18 months.

Despite his passionless pedantry, Obama is cheered and given an enthusiastic reception by the cadets in the front [who proffered lots of hands for shaking and took lots of pictures -- made me wonder whether the advance men had once again handed out cameras and asked all the Obama supporters to move to the front, as they did in Iraq -- I'm actually okay with that because the 25-30% of the military who vote Democrat would sincerely like to be up there, and nobody's asking the other 70% who voted for McCain to be insincere].

Meanwhile back at the ranch, MSNBC's resident loon Chris Matthews suggests that by going to West Point [in what was a naked exploitation of the cadets for photo-op purposes], Mr. Obama may have been entering "the enemy camp". Retch. Wretch.

I listened to tonight's speech, something I have avoided as often as not over the past year. I detected an attempt on the President's part to seem serious and determined and possibly even leader-like as he stood before uniformed men and women whose outlook on the world he does not understand in even the most miniscule respect. He said words about enemies, and attacks, and national security. But they had a hollow ring. It was an unconvincing performance, principally because it was a performance -- there is nothing about military campaigns, or the "passion of command" , or the scent of victory [rather than "successful conclusions" or "responsible ends"], or the delicate balance of power in a dangerous world that he truly understands in a way that goes down deep in the recesses of the soul, where it needs to reside if you're going to even dare to take your stab at something like a "St. Crispin's Day" speech.

No such speech was given this night. Nor shall be, I suspect, in months to come. It is for the citizenry, then, to make up this lack, and cheer on those who choose to set their feet upon the field of battle for our sake. I think we're up to the job. Here are some helpful hints:



And just to remind the Viggo about that film, the point of which he was so determined to miss:



Now I retire, as a two-day Newfoundland gale continues to hammer the walls and windows, and drive the sump-pump like a galley-slave. The lights keep flickering and threatening to go out. The phone's been in and out of service all day. Just another blustery day on the Rock.

And another late night into early morning. Another day tomorrow for staving off a world of ash.


IRRESISTIBLE UPDATE:

Stephen Green at Vodkapundit drunkblogs the President's speech. Everybody take a shot. Money quotes:

5:08PM “Troop levels remain a fraction” what they were in Iraq. True enough. 7/10ths is a fraction.

5:12PM “As commander-in-chief…” he’s decided to send an additional 30,000 troops for 30 months. That’s not a strategic decision. That’s a new-car warranty.

5:14PM “I’ve seen first hand the terrible wages of war.” It was at a late night photo op here in the US, where nine of ten military families said “no thanks” to the photo op. But still… Bambi is young. And being President is HARD.

5:15PM “We must increase the pressure on al Qaeda.” I’m still not convinced that we can’t do that by firing craploads of Hellfire missiles into Pakistan’s NWFT. But that’s just me.

5:18PM “July of 2011.” Congrats, AQ. Keep your head down until then, and you’ll do fine. Again, these are not strategic decisions the President has made after ten months of review. This is kicking the can further down the road, but with a slightly bigger boot.

5:42PM Bad writing. Lame delivery. Tepid response — from cadets ORDERED to be nice. And a strategic vision equal parts High School Essay Content and low-rent public relations.

I hope you had as much to drink as I did.

No, Stephen, but I get the point. Boo-yah. Ooh-rah.

GRATIAS AGAMUS DOMINO DEO NOSTRO


Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to "recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, A.D. 1789.









So much to be thankful for. Semper Fi.

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE DRUNKEN SAILOR?

OBAMA VOTES 'PRESENT'

Word is now out on how the Present, er, I mean President of the United States arrived at what could be the most important decision of his term of office, regarding final justice for the most devastating invasion of the nation since the war of 1812.

He deferred.

To his Attorney General, Eric Holder. You know, the one who engineered the Marc Rich pardon. And released classified CIA memoranda on interrogation. That guy.

Once upon a time we had a president who was mocked by his opponents in the media elite for calling himself "the decider". What, one must ask, is wrong with a president articulating (however plainly) what we all should understand as his sacred duty? What was so strange about the distillation of presidential responsibilities into that simple word?

Apparently the current office-holder finds it a little alien to his 'style'.

Fox's Chris Wallace and another plain-spoken guy, Don Imus, set out the facts as we know them. [hat-tip/ Gateway Pundit]

Given a choice, an increasing number of Americans are thinking they'd prefer a president who thought of himself as the Decider. George Bush didn't always live up to the boldness of that title -- when the Iraq war was in the dumper for more than year, I took to calling him the 'Delegator-in-Chief', and it was NOT a compliment. But at the end of the day, with opinion from every quarter substantially against him, he made the hard decision to adopt the surge strategy. When push came to shove, he made the decision to shove. He did not vote 'present'.

His successor has a different approach. With him, it's always someone else's fault, he's always floating somewhere above the nasty business of political fallout. It's taken a few days, as the outrage has accumulated over the decision to try the terrorist leadership in civilian court, but Mr. Obama has finally found his sound byte: 'The Devil made me do it.'



UPDATE:

Re: previous post -- had a brief exchange with Col. Bogdanos, emailing from Afghanistan. He doesn't anticipate being involved in the Greatest Show On Earth, when KSM comes to Manhattan.

Damn.

It's definitely going to be work fit for a Marine.

TILL DEATH DO US PART

Sorry to have missed this -- it's a few months old -- a piece in the Washington Post from August by Colonel Matthew Bogdanos USMC, devoted guardian of the Iraq National Museum and a genuinely nice guy, as I found on our brief acquaintance. He writes a reflection on the strength of the bond among those who put their lives on the line for the security of others.

Post-deployment, we are also engaged. Despite countless other tasks after a combat tour and the need to begin preparing for the next mission, we pause to value what has occurred, trying -- not always successfully -- to reconcile the horrors of combat with the bond created during those horrors. Perhaps it is the dimly perceived recognition that together we are better than any one of us had ever been before -- better maybe than we ever would be again. Or the dawning awareness that if we store up enough memories, these might someday be a source of strength, comfort or even our salvation.

Take the simple act of goodbye, of wishing comrades in arms fair winds and following seas. Those who have seen action together are not morbid about it. Just serious. It is, after all, the nature of the profession of arms that goodbyes are frequent and often final. But there is also the recognition that each of us has our own life and family to go back to in the "world." And even if we do "keep in touch," it will never be with the same intensity, never again as pure as it was when I had your "six," (your six o'clock, your back) and you had mine.

It's not long -- read it all.

And whisper a little prayer that, should the President's unutterably STUPID decision to try the mastermind of 9/11 in civilian court actually come to pass [I refuse to believe it cannot yet be derailed], Col. Bogdanos, in his capacity as an assistant district attorney for New York City, will be given the opportunity to get a piece of him.

"WELL I'M A TRAVELIN' MAN... dum-de-doo"

As our Nomad-in-Chief* wanders the globe in search of people to bow and apologize to, we are reminded that there is at least one place he has never set foot in, nor showed any inclination thereunto. It's called GITMO.

The staggeringly gifted Steven Crowder at PJTV (cat's Pajamas!) takes us on a little tour of what POTUS has missed. Watch the video here.
[hat-tip Instapundit]




*Nomad.... nomad???
RACIST!
Gotta be.

FOOTNOTE to last couple of posts:

In case y'all forgot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has proudly admitted to being the beheadsman of Daniel Pearl a couple of wars back.

Interestingly, Pearl's family has some objections to the judicial farce just announced by the Attorney General. Ya think?




'My name is Daniel Pearl... I'm a Jewish American.'

Case closed, apparently.


Lest we forget.

Yes, Your Majesty, no, Your Majesty
Tell us how low to go, Your Majesty
Make some more decrees, Your Majesty
Give us a kick if it please Your Majesty
Give us a kick if you would, Your Majesty --

Oh, that was GOOD,

YOUR

MAJESTY


President Ob[sequious]ama has followed up his non-stop verbal grovelpaloozas and periodic physical kow-tows with the latest instalment, Japanese model. Guess he was trying to make up to Emperor Akihito for all that humiliation suffered by his father Hirohito when he signed off on Japan's surrender to Douglas McArthur. Oh wait -- that never happened... Never mind.



Responding to Mr. Obama's reflexive desire to be the consummate internationalist, the College Republicans of University of Connecticut do a quickie historical review of how the leadership of the rest of the family of nations manages to keep its dignity in the face of the towering authority of the lil' emperor.



What we have here, ladies and germs, is a child, dancing in the world of make-believe -- if he could, he would wear an exotic costume and pretend to be anything other than what he is, in a perpetual Halloween fantasy.

Or, in a more substantial tradition, we have elected him to be the Boy Bishop, the Lord of Misrule, who in medieval times was a peasant child raised to artificial authority and permitted to remake the rules, as a festive game. It was a release valve within a highly structured society, and everybody had a good time. But the much-maligned medievals were smarter than us -- the Boy Bishop had sway for only a day or, at most, the Christmas season; and he misruled nothing more than a household or, at best, a diocese. And he knew the rules of the game. He did not try to enshrine heresy, or legalize felonious acts. He was a temporary Robin Hood who indulged his neighbours in a brief spell of treats and loosened tongues, tempered by some genuine religious duties to lead the people in prayer.

The medievals (and some of the 'Renaissanciers', at least in Spain) had another good idea about those in high office: the need for a court jester with full, unparalleled license to take them down a peg and remind them of their fallibility. Mr. Obama, not surprisingly, has appointed no Jester Czar to provide periodic jolts of human reality into The One's crystal palace of hubris. Too bad -- he'd be a busier fool than King Lear's. Poor Yorrick, etc.






There's at least one possible explanation as to why the President keeps abasing himself before foreign rulers: it's his veiled way of mooning his fellow Americans.












NOT A METROSEXUAL

IT'S AN O.J. DAY:

CONFESSED TERRORISTS WILL HAVE THEIR DAY
IN NEW YORK CIVILIAN COURT

When I was busy re-designing icons for an earlier post, I forgot one -- strangely enough, it's the first one I had thought of. That's because it took me only about the first six months of 2009 to arrive at the unlooked-for belief that, some time within the first half of the first term of the Obama presidency, there will be a serious and widespread public outcry on the following theme:

Let's round it up to a year, since the ceaseless self-regard of this president prompted him to open the first-ever "Office of the President-elect", complete with its own knock-off official seal in the ubiquitous poofter blue, just one year ago this week. [W.S.Gilbert gave us the anthem: "Bow, bow, to the President/god elect...."]

It has been a year of staggering hubris, Janus-faced politicking, kindergarten finger-pointing, the unmasking of radical ideology, and an administration for which the word "BANKRUPT" has a dozen different shades of meaning, all of them body blows to the American body politic.

But let it be recorded that the week of November 9 was a turning point for even this turncoat, tin-pot turd of a regime, for it was the coming together of events which exposed the president as pathologically detached from normal human sensibilities, as he:

--told preposterous lies about the grotesque unemployment levels he has created,

--played 52-pick-up with the whole spectrum of hands he has been dealt in the strategy for Afghanistan ("the right war", as he once had us believe),

--made a dead dog's breakfast of his response to the first mass terrorist attack on American soil since George W. Bush raised a bullhorn in the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center,

and, for his master-stroke,

--skulked out of town leaving his Attorney General to break it to the citizenry that the mastermind of that pile of smoking ruins will be deposited in Manhattan to launch the biggest legal farce since O.J. had a glove fitting.

My God, this man works fast!!!

I'll leave it to the man whose intelligence, integrity, and gift for the verbal slam-dunk stuffin' are making him the shining star of modern journalism, Professor Krauthammer, to lay out the case against the accused:





As they say in the vernacular, Mr. Obama has stepped in it -- so deep, so gaggingly putrid, that he will never get the stink off him, and is in grave danger of making himself unwelcome in any gathering, indoors or out. What's truly breathtaking is that he apparently continues to believe he smells like lilacs in springtime and always will.

What Mr. Obama has failed to grasp (despite being the most intelligent being to ever take over the oval -- blessed with Divine faculties which will cause the sea levels recede and the polar bears to play hockey) is that he got to where he is with the support of just a sliver over half the American voters who bothered to show up, and that a substantial portion of those (a minority, but not a small one) voted for a man who ran for office as a centrist, a healer, a post-racial, post-partisan mountain-top sage. On the other side of the scales, he also came into office with just under half the people wanting the other guy -- but many of those wishing him well enough, and hoping for smooth waters with "no-drama Obama" at the helm.

What Mr. Obama has failed to grasp is that support for him has done a significant tilt in the opposite direction -- it's just under half the country that supports him now, and just over half that gives him thumbs down. And it's not just that the latter wish they'd gotten that other guy (who on his worst day would have been a better president, beyond question), but that they feel deceived not only as to Obama's intentions and policies, but as to his competence and his character. A growing portion of these not only disagree with their president, they are repulsed and infuriated by him -- even as they are energized and exhilarated at their own positive activism against his plans.

What happened today, issuing from the Attorney General's office, was a dark-alley mugging, a Judas kiss, a cold and swift knife in the back. I believe that this hapless, clueless president has turned a corner today in his rapidly deteriorating relationship with his countrymen -- and what he will see, if he has eyes to see it, is a shadowy path ahead, bordered by a hissing gauntlet of restless shapes whose patience is on the wane.

Before he's home and dry, it's entirely possible that they may be hissing that word, "Resign."

REMEMBRANCE

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month a family of disparate nations pays tribute to those who have taken up arms to defend their homelands and protect their families. In the U.S. the day is for "Veterans", those who have fought and lived to tell the tales -- "Memorial Day" in the spring is devoted specifically to those who gave their lives.


Canada, England, and other nations upon whom the wholesale slaughter of World War I had such immediate and devastating impact, reserve the day of Armistice to remember the dead, and call it "Remembrance Day." It is usually a day so sombre that it really has no equivalent in the more optimistic culture of us Yanks.


This Remembrance Day I will dedicate my prayers to remembering someone I have never met but who is almost as real for me as any son of mine. Today I remember Captain Kyle Van de Giesen, Marine Corps helicopter pilot, who died at age 29 in a helicopter crash in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on October 26.


He leaves behind him a wife, an 18-month-old daughter, and a brand new son whose birth, yesterday, he did not live to see.

Kyle will spend this Remembrance Day in my heart because his career as a student at St. Anselm's College, recruitment under Captain Goedecke, summers at Officer Candidate School, graduation and commission on the St. A's quad, ultimate posting to a base in California, and deployment to the far side of the globe into a world of dust and enemies, runs parallel to that of Captain Cincinnatus, my own son -- age 29, Marine helicopter pilot, husband and father, for whom Kyle was a friend, a comrade, and a model.

At St. Anselm's, in Manchester, New Hampshire, where the two future Marines' paths crossed, Kyle was remembered at a service at the college war memorial, a quiet corner of the quad which was built during Kyle's years at the school, and which will bear his name inscribed among the generations of alumni heroes.

Kyle spent his first year at St. A's continuing his stellar record as a quarterback, but he then gave up football to concentrate on his studies. His impact on the fledgling college team was remembered on October 31, with his name and number emblazoned on the field. Kyle was laid to rest on November 6 in North Attleboro, Mass., amid an outpouring of sympathy and support from his entire community, withat least a thousand strangers lining the streets in silent respect for his funeral procession. Four days later, on the 234th birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps, Kyle became a father again.

Despite the fact that I truly don't want to, I can't help but imagine what the Van de Giesen family is going through right now. Their celebration of the birth of the new baby is as much about courage as it is about joy. May God bless them in their time of need, have mercy on them in the moments of despair, and guide the nation for which Kyle gave his life, to reward his sacrifice with the victory that is within its reach.

Captain Kyle Rolf Van de Giesen
April 14, 1980 - October 26, 2009

Requiescat in pace.
Semper Fidelis

FREIHEIT

Today marks the day that the wall, built for the unusual purpose of keeping people in as well as out, came tumbling down by force of sheer human free will, and no small amount of courage.

Take note, new heralds of post-modern socialism: the people of East Germany gave each other courage, they gathered quietly, they got just forceful enough, then through the first available crack they power-walked, they skipped, they danced, they laughed and smiled, and they made an orderly rush to FREEDOM.




It was kind of like a tea-party, though it had percolated up from decades of genuine starvation of every kind.

I remember it, as clearly as I remember the other landmarks of my baby-boom lifetime. Even clearer is my memory of Christmas 1989, when Leonard Bernstein conducted a concert of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in Berlin, played by musicians and choristers from all over the world (including both Germanies), with the lyrics of the famous Ode to Joy ("Freude") altered to be an Ode to Freedom ("Freiheit").



[warning -- the video ends abruptly! -- to avoid disappointment, buy the DVD!]

But the dancing, the pride, and the determination have much in common with the growing strength of the movement which stands between this Obama-captained Ship of Fools, and the perilous shoals towards which they're steering; and in the end -- count on it, Commodore -- there will be an orderly rush to freedom. And you and your personal "300" (do we have that many czars yet?) will be left standing at the gates, looking perplexed and bypassed by history.

Count on it, Madame Speakress (count 220 to 215!). Count on it, Lord Axelrod of Mordor. Count on it.


In the meantime, celebrations of real history go on in Berlin, but the Reader of the Free World is too busy to attend. FORE!

As Toby Harnden of London's Telegraph reminds us, it's a good thing that previous presidents found time to make a stopover.



[Big mo': slide forward to minute 1:15]


THE PRICE OF FREIHEIT IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE

And Col. Ralph Peters is beginning wonder whether we have the stomach, and the army, to be vigilant for even a couple of minutes.

THUNDERSTRUCK.

AGAIN.

AT THE ENEMY WITHIN.

It is a difficult task to collect one's thoughts, to try and paint a picture from the trickle of news, and to formulate a response to the freakish nature of the massacre at Fr. Hood. I expect it will come into focus over the next week or so, despite the best of efforts of a perverse media establishment and the President they worshiped into office to spin and wring and mangle the data so as to steer us away from the obvious conclusions.

I have but one thought so early in the story: how delicious it is that a homicidal devotee of the one of the [if not THE] most misogynist cultures in human history was halted in his murderous tracks by a gun-totin', pants-wearin', ass-kickin', baby-makin', soldier-lovin'
W-O-M-A-N.

Meet Sgt. Kimberley Munley.

Hear her roar.

Take your burqa, and shove it, Major Jihad, you tiny little man. She even took a through-and-through bullet of yours, but it didn't stop her from putting a stop to you. May you recover enough from the ass-whoopin' she gave you, just to up and die of shame.


SPEAKING OF TINY LITTLE MEN

...anybody home?



The Procrastinator-in-Chief acquitted himself with his customary 'cool' -- that charming mixture of icewater in the veins and stumble-bum incompetence we have come to expect, as he mounted the podium after the massacre, and addressed the crisis as about (you should pardon the expression) bullet-point 4 in the notecards -- after due deference to our 'first Americans' (a new blended term for the multicultural lexicon) and their convention, and a friendly 'shout-out' to someone he personally had pinned the Presidential Medal of Freedom on only last August -- Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- except the President called it the Congressional Medal of Honor. Honor, freedom, whatever...

After several minutes of this self-ingratiating b.s., Mr. Obama finally remembered to pull a long face and talk about the "tragedy" at Ft. Hood. Except it wasn't a tragedy -- tragedy would be if 13 people died in an avalanche. It was an act of jihadist slaughter, sir. The murder of our nation's defenders within what should be the safe confines of their own home base, in their own home country. And all you can say, little man, is that we shouldn't "jump to conclusions." Aw, go ahead, Mr. President -- jump.

Jump into that nice dark suit. Put away the nine-iron. Another photo op, comin' your way.



Another baker's dozen of The Best of Us -- requiescant in pace.

CINCINNATUS TELLS US OF THE DEATH OF HIS FRIEND.



One of the best.

I’ve been plotting out this post in my head for a week or so, working on the graphics, and accumulating links. By coincidence, I have found myself galloping to keep up with the realities that have bolstered my own ideas – life imitating art, truth being stranger than fiction, all that kind of stuff. However, I will lay things out in the order as conceived, in hopes to “infotain.”


IMAGE IS EVERYTHING

The first time I ever saw the Che-style Obama face was on the now-famous wall of the Houston Obama campaign headquarters, which lies between my sister's house and the church. There was the tri-colour paint-by-number graphic which has now become the icon of hopey-changitude, supersized on a large mustard wall. At the time I first saw it, Obama was to me an amusing, sophomoric poseur whose jet-puffed platitudes one could hardly imagine fooling anybody. Heh.

As time passed and the unthinkable became the electable, that stretch of matte
mustard wall and its painted poster art just screamed for some kind of comment. It's taken awhile, but this past week some poor sod just couldn't take it anymore and went a little jiggy with a spray can. It was just a matter of time. With that in mind, I've done a little embroidering of my own on the Icon of The One, with appropriate links and meditations.

ITEM: OBAMA JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OVERTURNS ELECTION RESULTS
in smalltown North Carolina --

THE MESSAGE: black citizens of Kinston are too STUPID to vote for candidates instead of parties

Local voters of Kinston, N.C. decided, by a ballot initiative vote of TWO to ONE, that candidates in certain local elections would not be identified by party affiliation. Nobody complained, nobody rallied the "nay" voters to fight the outcome of vote. But the nannying busybodies of the Obama administration "reached out" from inside the Beltway to tell the voters of Kinston, N.C. that they were not capable of making decisions for themselves.

Though black voters outnumber white ones in Kinston by a ratio of two to one, so the measure for non-partisan candidates could not have passed without the black population's approval, Attorney General Holder and Co. have conjured up some bogus "civil rights" complaint as justification for unilaterally overturning the local referendum result.

Obviously, in the opinion of the DOJ operatives, black voters in Kinston MUST necessarily see their interests served ONLY by Democrats, and will be unable to identify which candidate will serve their interests unless he or she is identified during the campaign and on the ballot as a Democrat. Without a party affiliation spelled out in black and white (ahem), black voters will be prevented from exercising their right [their DUTY?]to vote [Democrat].


ITEM: in case you've been living in an abandoned hermitage hut on Skellig Michael and missed it,

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION KEEPS UP ALL-OUT OFFENSIVE AGAINST FOX NEWS,

with the usual asides for Rush Limbaugh and all conservative talk-radio gabbers

Nobody could have missed the story, as recounted here, or here, or here. All during the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama couldn't contain his obsessing about Sean Hannity, and avoided any direct contact with FOX until the nights of the Republican convention, when he sat down with Bill O'Reilly, and got the ONLY hardball-ish questions he has ever endured. Once he was elected, it was presumed that The One would accept his acceptance, and rise above the opposition criticism which is served up to every elected official.

Bu-u-u-u-t no-o-o-o-o-o -- he's still a little, um, jumpy.

So when the few voices of opposition, or mere probitive curiosity, among the media try to do their job and face off with these powerful agents of mass hopey-changitude who have swept into office, suddenly it has become as important to the new administration to target and stifle its opposition as it is to find and carry out solutions to the grave problems confronting us.

What needs to be said is being said, here, there, and everywhere, by Republicans and Democrats alike who see it for the childish sandbox feud that it is. But it is worth pointing out, in the most graphic way, that Mr. Obama is drifting perilously close to his "nattering nabobs of negativism" moment. With his dithering, his puffery, his petulance, and his Janus-faced politicking, Mr. Obama does not need to take on the cartoon persona of Nixon's disgraced (for chump change compared to Charlie Rangel.....) Veep Spiro Agnew.

Mr. Obama, this warning is probably too late, but YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO THERE.


ITEM: LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM

That's the title of a tiresome book by tiresome Resident Senate Comedian Al Franken, he of Minnesota. But Google any variation of the word "LYING" and the word "OBAMA" and you'll get literally millions of choices, and only a few of the top ones are Birthers and other Moonbats. Some are even disillusioned liberals.

The subjects of the lying are almost too numerous to count: --

-- TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT - legislation posted online
-- GITMO, DETENTION, RENDITION POLICIES - change!!!
-- AFGHANISTAN - war of necessity, pursuit of the Taliban, Bin Laden, Al Qaida
-- HEALTH CARE - single-payer, illegals, abortion, rationing, duty to die
-- CAP AND TRADE - tax hikes, soaring electricity cost
-- GAY RIGHTS - marriage, military
-- EMPLOYMENT (and maximum unemployment)
-- STIMULUS SPENDING
-- ACORN
-- HE'S NOT THE [insert name of radical associate] I KNEW

And the beat goes on.

Over the past two years various people have made the observation that at least some portion of support for Obama as both candidate and president comes from people who support him in spite of his attempts to sound centrist, because the unwhispered secret is that they know he's lying -- it's just something he has to do to get elected and appease certain groups. (Even Jeremiah Wright said so.)

Just to refresh the memory, John Hinderaker at Powerline probably said it best.

But if there is one drum that the President has beaten incessantly, starting with Inauguration Day, and at every opportunity at home and abroad ever since, in the most degrading and unseemly fashion, it is the fake and fraudulent oil drum of GEORGE BUSH BASH-AND-TRASH.

Unable to stop playing this tune to excuse his every shortcoming, Obama, and his henchmen, pulled out every stop this past week with the most heinous and flagrant falsehood yet: that over seven years at war, the Bush administration "never asked key questions" about a strategy for Afghanistan. This is a breathtaking and COLOSSAL LIE.

Key questions were asked, and answered, and turned over to BOTH candidates for president in 2008, and then followed up on with the winning team during the transition, at which time the Obama team REQUESTED SILENCE about the findings -- why? so they could claim credit for the strategy, and lie about its source later on? do they plan the lies that far in advance? We'll leave that to speculation.

Weekly Standard Official Hottie Stephen Hayes is too polite when he calls the Obamanoids "ingrates". Suffice it to say that, on the most important issues facing the nation and the world, they are prepared to LIE, for the most self-sodden reasons. Puke-making.

Obama's reflexive Bush-bashing even spilled over to the First Lady (and I use the term loosely), who wasted no time in projecting her own obliviousness to the plight of military families onto former First Lady Laura Bush -- a move that was not only low-class, low-rent, and profoundly unladylike, it was also a COLOSSAL LIE. [thank you, hollering Cassandra]


ITEM: in a similar vein, artery, or what you will,

OBAMA FIDDLES WHILE AFGHANISTAN BURNS

I won't speak to this, because others more qualified should have their say. Over at Blackfive, OEF Afghanistan veteran Deebow writes an OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT. Pithy quote:

Mr. President, deciding to do nothing is still a decision.

I demand, decency demands, Americans who believe in victory demand, and most importantly, the American families with family members in the fight -- who certainly have the most invested and unquestionably the most to lose-- demand that the politics, excuse making and dithering end and that you give the necessary support to the men and women who are bearing the battle and taking the fight to our enemies. I am not asking, I am telling you to listen to those with the knowledge and skills that can turn the tide of this rapidly resurgent enemy we face and to give them the resources they ask for.

ITEM: THE WHOLE LIFE AND ART THING

JULIUS CAESAR

The spousal unit and I took a rare outing to farm country and dropped in at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, as it is once again calling itself, despite the fact that non-'Speare plays in performance still outnumber 'Speareworks considerably. We'd heard good things about this year's Julius Caesar, so that was our play of choice.

[sidebar: Let me take the opportunity say how very much I liked the production, though it was not flawless. I thought Brutus was poorly played, on the whole, though he got better as time passed. As Caesar Geraint Wynn Davies built his character in a particular way, not the only way it could be done, but it worked for me. Cassius, Tom Rooney, looked lean, but not especially hungry, kind of dweeby in fact -- but he was fantastic -- excellent, intelligent reading of the role. Ditto Mark Antony (the "fantastic", not the dweeby), sizzling in the hands of Jonathan Goad -- great stuff.

Costumes and sets were unusual, and have met with negative criticism. I'd have changed a few things, but on the whole I get what the designer was doing and I approve. Amusing sidelight: Caesar's wife, Calphurnia, was played, not memorably, by a lovely black actress, Yanna McIntosh, dressed in mustard yellow and looking for all the world like Michelle Obama. Maybe it meant something -- maybe it was just fun. Couldn't tell ya. But in general, Kudos to everybody.]

I was especially interested in seeing this play because, although JC has never been one of my favourite Shakespeares, I taught it and directed an abridged version with a class of grade 7 & 8 students this past spring, and so went to the theatre with a more developed idea of how I thought it should go than I would otherwise have had.

As I taught the play last spring, quite unintentionally it kept hitting me on the head with various passages about the dangerously growing hubris of the new conqueror, especially as expressed by the "lean and hungry" Cassius. The parallels to both candidate and now President Obama were eerily obvious. Naturally I was prepared to take my place in the audience at Stratford and have these sentences resonate for me, in a way that I expect few in the audience, and NONE on the stage, were likely to share.

Well, I don't know what the director's intentions or politics may be -- I have to doubt that he is as critical of the Annointed One as I am -- but he did seem to be having some fun with the possible modern parallels of the whole mob/cult effect generated by an arrogant, larger-than-life, too-good-to-be-true, amn't-I-almost-godlike victor assuming the throne of empire.

...And this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature and must bend his body...
...Ye gods, it doth amaze me
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world
And bear the palm alone...
Why, man, he doth bestride the world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
...Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!...
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.

Ah, savour it, fellow right-wing crazies! Is't not Obamarama writ large?

Large indeed -- for what did we see when the curtain rose, but a colonnade upstage, with three large banners hung between its sets of columns: red, navy, light blue, and at the bottom in dark blue letters [good Roman capitals, they were] the name emblazoned, "CAESAR". Now what does that remind us of??!! I couldn't believe it. It could NOT have been accidental. As they say on the blogs, "HEH."

Foolishly I left the theatre without making sure that the graphic on the banner was to be found in my programme, and alas the only version I've been able to find is this one, where the colours are not so obvious and the imperious head is hidden behind the (rather too doughy) face of Brutus as played (rather too stiffly) by Ben Carlson. I shall look further afield to see if I can find it unadorned, but you get the idea. Heh, indeed.

That was to be the triumphant coda to today's post -- but lo! What madness through yonder internet porthole lies? Could it be another Obama flunkie, Rocco Landesman, appointed to "remake" the National Endowment for the Humanities, telling us that the President is "the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar"? Is this dude for real? Does he not know what a (a) stupid, (b) uncomfortable, (c) factually incorrect, and (d) did I mention stupid? remark that is? But there it was, on Drudge, for all the world to see.

Naturally it did not take long for persons of actual intelligence to swoop down and humiliate this fellow, with facts, for starters, and better grammar and more logical thought process for the main course. Landesman at least has enough of a grasp of the basic humanities to know that what he said -- "powerful writer" -- is not really what he meant, but rather that Obama is the most powerful man who is also a writer since Julius Caesar, if ya know what I'm sayin', blah, blah..... Forget it, dude. You are just wrong in every conceivable way, and the boys at Powerline and The Corner are more than happy to show you how.

And that needlessly specific claim that Mr. Obama is "the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt"? Pass the salt friend, good chance you are gonna eat this one. Just check it out, or ask Bill Ayers [via Bluegrass Bulletin].

There was a Caesar -- here comes such another?

And for the love of God and the all the gods, this does NOT constitute a death-wish, a threat, an incitement for Harry Reid and Chris Dodd and Barbara Boxer to stab Barack on the floor of the Senate. Or even at the Theatre of Pompey.

NO.

NOT.

NUNH-UH.

IT'S DIABOLICAL, IT'S FRAUDULENT, IT'S OUTRAGEOUS

MOSTLY, IT'S HILARIOUSLY COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE

HACK JOURNO'S CRANK OUT PALIN BIO PARODY

Don't be fooled. When you go to buy Sarah Palin's Going Rogue at your local book emporium, be sure to pick up the one with the cover photo that says "I'm enjoying the crisp Alaskan breezes", not the one that says "I'm in the political spotlight in my cute red suit."

By gum, they're a clever bunch over at O/R books and The Nation, who have collected some of the Left's finest commentators to bury their hatchets in the former Alaska Governor. Essays by a herd of snorting journo's are bound together for the reader's delectation, including such sterling prose stylists as Naomi Klein, Frank Rich, and Eve Ensler (think we'll get her vagina to crank out a monologue?). Can't wait to hear what they have to say? Then pick up the designer knock-off, the $10 Rolex of political biographies -- it's the one on the LEFT:


You'll know it by its paper cover -- the publishing world's equivalent of "direct-to-video". A scam so cheesy, even National Public Radio thinks it might be ethically challenged.

But if you want the real story, by the only Genuine Star of the '08 political constellation, lean to the RIGHT and get the other one, HARDCOVER, hot off the presses in mid-November.

Don't be fooled by these people who are SO much cleverer than YOU!!!

What does the O/R in O/R Books stand for? The brand new publishing partnership of Oakes [John, whose clients have included Abbie Hoffman and John Waters] and Robinson [Colin, who previously published Noam Chomsky and Nobel Prize imposter Rigoberta Menchu]. Talk about pedigree, pal!!!

Phew!! That was a close one. It's almost too much for the cradle-to-grave welfare-dependent mind to process, and we all know that's the book-buying demographic both are aiming for, right?

NFL / MEDIA / POVERTY PIMPS
MESSAGE TO LIMBAUGH
(and all the rest of us in the GLOBAL COMMUNITY):

"NON-MEMBERS OF THE CULT
NEED NOT APPLY"

Talk-radio guru Rush Limbaugh has been dropped (offered the chance to tastefully withdraw, he refused) from the group bid to buy the St. Louis Rams. This went down for one solitary reason: influential people do not like his opinions.


NEWS SHOCKER!!!!

LEFT-WING MEDIA HATE-MONGER OLBERMANN DEFENDS LIMBAUGH'S BID!!!!

Well, let's remember that MSNBC smash-mouth commentator Keith Olbermann was inexplicably promoted from being a full-time sportscaster to some sort of political pundit, so on this subject he's finally found something about which he's in a position to offer analysis. (So happy to give him the opportunity to take a breather from such inspired editorializing as imagining newsblogger Michelle Malkin as a "smashed-up bag of meat with lipstick".)

Olbermann, to his credit [!!!!#$%????], can't understand why anyone would want to prevent Limbaugh from owning a piece of St. Louis's loser football team. Whoa!!!

If even Olbie recognizes the rank idiocy of what has transpired, then it's GOTTA be obvious to one and all.

What is less obvious to many, however, is what this kind of incident signifies about how the United States of America has entered the final, accelerated stages of a hideous transmogrification. Will it escape being a giant rotting cockroach by the end of one term of rule by The Cult? Gallup tells us that membership in The Cult is experiencing creeping shrinkage. That's good. Secretary of State Hillary Broadbottom Clinton is now more popular than The Messiah. I guess (gulp) that's good too. Will civilization survive until 2012?


"POVERTY PIMPS"?

I borrowed that moniker (applied to Race-Shakedown Kingpins Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) from former NFL linebacker and long-time pastor Ken Hutcherson. Vitally important race/color credentials available here.

OVER AT DOC PLUMBO'S, I VENT ABOUT HEALTH CARE

Oh Canada.

Again.

There's a bit of hagiography (holy legend) about the Second Apostle of Rome, St. Philip Neri, which has the ring of historical truth, and the solid gold seal of metaphysical truth.

Here it is, as recounted by the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in his journal First Things:

The story is told of St. Philip Neri (1515-1595) that he gave a most unusual penance to a novice who was guilty of spreading malicious gossip.

He told him to take a feather pillow to the top of a church tower on a blustery day and there release all the feathers to the wind. Then he was to come down from the tower, collect all the feathers dispersed over the far countryside, and put them back into the pillow. Of course the poor novice couldn't do it, and that was precisely Philip's point about the great evil of tale bearing.

Slander and calumny have a way of spreading to the four winds and, once released, can never be completely recalled. Even when accusations are firmly nailed as false, the reputations of those falsely accused bear a lingering taint. “Oh yes,” it is vaguely said, “wasn't he once accused of . . . "

The words of the Bard that you learned in grade school are entirely to the point:

Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

A heinous crime against reputation is going on at present in the United States, created by a national media for whom their profession has become an ethics-free zone, with the willing complicity of Democrat politicians and their accomplices in the liberal punditocracy, f'rinstance those public menaces the Race-Shakedown Twins, Sharpton and Jackson.

The crime in question is the slanderous attribution of vicious and repugnant utterances to radio gab-king Rush Limbaugh -- utterances that have been branded "racist" (with good reason), and are being blown around by once-reputable media organs like wildfire through an L.A. county canyon in midsummer, without the merest, slightest, most perfunctory effort to discover whether these things were ever actually said.

Limbaugh categorically denies having said them, and challenges the slanderers to produce a single authentic source for any one of them -- a task that not one slanderer has succeeded in doing, and the furious back-peddling has begun already, though with reservations and without apology or retraction.

Rush Limbaugh is one of the most politically astute voices to command the public ear in America. He is also brash, relentless, occasionally vulgar and sexist, culturally under-educated, and genuinely EDGY (where most on the contemporary arts or discourse scene who claim to be so don't even come close to it). Limbaugh is proof that genuine, Swiftian satire is not yet dead -- though his most vicious and/or hypersensitive critics prove equally that it (satire) may be on its last legs.

One of the areas where Limbaugh can be the most edgy is in matters of race, or more specifically, racial politics. One might sometimes be able to characterize his mode of delivering uncomfortable truths as "offensive" or perhaps, more accurately, "abrasive" -- but I challenge anyone to reveal a single abrasive utterance for which an intelligent person, in the cool light of reasoned debate, could not make some coherent and persuasive arguments. Others might disagree, but even Limbaugh's most outrageous claims ARE basically arguable.

Anyone who claims otherwise, and who attributes to him the kind of mindless bigotry embodied in the controversial "quotes" now scurrying around on the public winds.... well, you could say a lot of things about such a person, but one thing is for certain: he or she has NEVER been a listener to the Rush Limbaugh program. IMPOSSIBLE. In fact, Limbaugh's harshest critics, on any subject, prove again and again that they could not possibly have listened to his show for more than a sound bite. (Or, I will allow, it's possible that they did listen longer than a bite, but they have demonstrated themselves too blind and stupid to grasp what they heard.)

There are any number of legitimate criticisms one could make about Limbaugh's program and his manner in delivering it -- I've made a few above, and there are more. I'm always surprised at how his most vitriolic critics seem to miss everything that they might genuinely criticize, and then spew with abandon criticisms that are patently false, even as they themselves engage in all the crass, hateful, superficial, often cruel ad hominem attacks and dishonesty of which they accuse their target. It's a strange thing -- one which, I'm thinkin', betrays nothing so much as FEAR.

Now, I can picture some sort of academically-inclined leftist phiilosopher/ideologue -- of an intensely serious and humorless and apocalyptically tragic mentality -- cultivating the kind of visceral hatred for Rush Limbaugh which has clearly gripped his opponents in media and politics. But I cannot picture this serious partisan lowering himself to engage in the mindless schoolyard savaging, the casually bald-faced lying, the hysterical bogey-manning that issues from Limbaugh's media enemies day in and day out, to their everlasting humiliation; the non-stop indulgence in the very sins for which they would burn Limbaugh at the stake (or some other form of execution, as cheerily recommended by Chris Matthews and others).

What's going on here is just wrong. And the purpose of it is not simply to discredit Limbaugh's opinions, but to destroy his reputation in order to prevent him, as a private citizen, from pursuing a private business transaction to become part-owner of a sports franchise.

Limbaugh has become very rich doing what he does, and that's probably his biggest sin -- he has enough ready cash to fulfill the ultimate sports fantasy, especially for the fan who was never talented or fit enough to play himself. How much, one wonders, does rank jealousy of both his money and his sports-dream lie behind this all-out effort to sabotage Limbaugh's bid for the St. Louis Rams?

On such things apparently the world turns, and, like Hitler at the English Channel, this advance must be halted in its tracks. A proud moment for the fifth estate.

St. Philip Neri, Holy Fool, pray for us.

Now, remind me, I live in a big, cold urban wasteland.......why?

Off the ol' front porch:


Toward Placentia Bay:


Old lighthouse, Dodding Head, Great Burin Island



Pickin' partridgeberries:


Home again tomorrow. Yeech.

REAL LIFE ~ THE ONION:
A SEAMLESS GARMENT

PRESIDENT-OF-THE-WORLD OBAMA
WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Mere days ago the kings of the satirical world over at The Onion [read regularly -- die laughing] gave us a short list of the highlights of Barry Obambi's address to the United Nations, among them:

-- Now is a time when we must do something about some problem, perhaps by working with others.

-- If Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons, then it will have to face blank and blank. Oh shoot, I forgot to fill those in.

Little did they know that, based on these very concepts, that very president would shortly be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Or is that Piss Prize?, awarded, as it has been so often in recent years, for little more than consistently pissing on the United States whenever a microphone presents itself -- see: Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat....

Little did we know that the criteria for Nobel status would evolve into something resembling a grading category on a kindergarten report card ["does not run with scissors" or, dare I say it, "promises hope and change"] -- marked on a Dewey-esque sliding scale of "pass/fail" or "satisfactory/unsatisfactory", of course.

On a more serious note, the folks at PowerLine have put together a nice summary of the history of Nobel Prizes, ancient and modern, which explains how these absurdities just keep happening, and how, in fact, the once-prestigious award has a very long record of being fairly ridiculous. Read and learn.

Instapundit has an excellent round-up of responses, including a devastating poignard from Richard Cohen at the WaPo (who will temporarily be forgiven for making effective use of a slur on Sarah Palin), and some wise words from my friend David Warren (via RealClearPolitics). Even the Huffington Post is rattled by the ridiculousness of it. [No link -- life is too short....] Gateway Pundit offers up that it was Nobel for "the gift of gab" -- fair enough.

Is this just another case of "Trophy Kid" Syndrome? The unfortunately-named Starshine Roshell seems to have more sense than her parents [cripes, boomers, the things you did to your kids -- Starshine???], and wrote a needed complaint about what it means when you give a trophy to just anybody, merely for showing up. Little did she know that six months later.....

IRONY ALERT: Oh, those cut-ups at Saturday Night Live! Little did they know that the Big Prize would soon be awarded to the President they had slam-bammed the week before for having been in office nine months and achieved absolootly nuttin' -- nada -- not so much.


POST RACIAL AMERICA

Remember that campaign promise? Well, I'm betting it will come true -- later rather than sooner, and in a backwards fashion. I'm betting that ordinary pale Americans ["white" is ridiculous, and "Caucasian" is exclusionary and inaccurate] are going to get so fed up at being called racists for voicing opinions and ideas that have nothing whatever to do with racial considerations, they are going to start barking back or just ignoring the Amen-corners of the Racial Grievance Industry, and eventually silence them all by diminution and irrelevance. It has begun already.

What's terribly sad, though, is that the road to racial harmony has been carpet-bombed in the few months since the ascendacy of The First Black President and Harbinger of Racial Harmony, due entirely to the redoubled efforts of the racial grievance industry, who can think of no other defense of their stumbling standard-bearer as he fraks up his foray into global politics. Check out this sad survey on the question of whether America is or isn't a basically fair and decent society. That opinion among the country's major minority group has turned on a dime [perhaps one of the few remaining in the national purse, Mr. Geithner?] is itself utterly indecent.


SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

That snippet of Biblical text is often misinterpreted by those who were deprived of learning their King James English: "Suffer the little children come unto to me" means, in today's lingo, "Let the children approach me." The words carry no meaning related to the endurance of physical pain.

Sadly, the two interpretations (correct and not) are increasingly, perversely, fused as we observe in the culture the acclerating normalization of "intergenerational sex". The most recent, most heinous development is the downright weirdsmobile support for convicted child-rapist Roman Polanski, found overwhelmingly among the European (largely the Fwench) "arts community", but leaking frighteningly over into the upper echelons of Hollyweird.

The Polanski affair, however, remains at the fringes of society by virtue (ahem) of having sprouted from the weedy world of entertainment, where no one expects to find normality, whether it is in matters of serial marriage, drug habits, or obscene amounts of money being invested in really really bad taste, from horrible fashions to obese mansions full of kitsch furnishings.

Far more disturbing is the introduction of skewed morality into the politics and education that are supposed to serve the rest of us -- the normal people in nice little homes in ordinary neighbourhoods around the corner from the barber shop. In the United States this skewed crew has come to rest in the nest of Czars -- Presidential appointments to positions of advisory authority and policy influence, appointments requiring no public vetting or representative approval process.

Various czars have been outed as having troublesome records, the most extreme of examples of which have recently crashed -- Van Jones, "Green Jobs Czar", was revealed to be a self-described Communist (bad) and, by any definition, an anti-white racist (way badder). But a President, who is proving himself to be as GREEN as a man can be at his own new JOB, was a long-time admirer and couldn't wait to get Jones on his team.

More disturbing is the presence of Kevin Jennings in a Czar-ship where his capacity to do horrific damage is far greater than Jones's boondoggle. Jennings, by some bizzarro twist of circumstances, ended up being "Safe Schools Czar" -- this despite his being a gay activist whose work and publications all revolve around one aspect or another of being gay in school.

The crowning finial seems to be his intro blurb for a book called Queering Elementary Education [no, I'm not making that up]. Apparently in that Foreword, Jennings totally (and revealingly) steps in it, by expressing some brand of endorsement for a certain Harry Hay, who has an unsavoury connection with the notorious NAMBLA -- the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Learn all you need (and perhaps more than you care) to know about that group from a new book, The Last Undercover [profiled here at Big Hollywood], about the FBI's exposure of its repugnant operations, by intrepid agent Bob Hamer. It's one thing to sacrifice your life for your country -- another to sacrifice the inner sanctity of your own mind, which this poor man probably had to do in order to achieve his aims.

Big Hollywood, obviously a significant source of reflection on the Polanski affair, and thus on larger issues regarding mainstreaming of pedophilia, also offers an interesting piece by a gay conservative who was himself a "Lolito", as he calls it. It won't be agreeable to every reader, but is also food for thought, especially about what happens to the Tolerance Police when fascism becomes fashionable.

John Nolte at Big Hollywood weighs in with a rather chilling piece on Hollywood's pedophilia-mainstreaming agenda. I weigh in on page 4 of his comments, citing a terrific 1997 article by Norman Podhoretz -- Lolita, My Mother-in-Law, the Marquis de Sade, and Larry Flynt -- about how Nabokov's Lolita made pedophilia "thinkable", for which reason Podhoretz, who once made a career of debating against censorship of any kind, came to the reluctant conclusion that Lolita should never be read, and never even have been written. Food for thought, from Commentary -- for purchase, but worth it.

October 9 -- 69th would-be birthday of the composer of Imagine. Imagine all the people living for today. How perfect. How ee-e-e-e-e-w-w-w.

Imagine the vast expensive estate in the British countryside. Imagine the custom-made white grand piano in the gigantic mansion sitting-room with the garden view. "Imagine all the people sharing all the world" (except maybe that giant estate and its sitting room: "Zer vuss rhoom for seven families in ziss house..." -- Dr. Zhivago)

"Imagine no possessions," like the custom-painted Rolls Royce.

Imagine -- the speedo version, but you get the gist...

TERRA NOVA BLOGGING

It's always nice to have an excuse for neglecting the blog, the present one being that I had an urgent mission in Newfoundland: to sleep until whenever, rising only to soak in Dead Sea salts in my old footed tub, then maybe take a drive to Walmart, more to take in the scenery than to buy anything, closing the day with an arduous trip through an episode of Battlestar Gallactica...

Fog has its uses.

Is it any wonder I can't make myself sit down and digest the implications of the Afghano-Obama-ditherama? I read, I listen, I shudder, I look out the window and think better thoughts.

LEARN SOMETHIN' NEW EVERY DAY

Newfoundland experienced a "Wreckhouse wind." I looked this up. Wreckhouse is an area in the southwest of the island, that gets wind blasting off the ocean, funneled down a series of narrow valleys only to burst out onto the plain simultaneously, creating a massive pressure change and some sort of effect that can cross the whole province. You figure it out -- it's all right here. Enjoy the part about it blowing the narrow-gauge railway trains off the track -- Newfoundland central planning strikes again. All resemblances to Canadian Human Rights Commissions or American congress in session is strictly coincidental.

Gateway Pundit gives it short and quick:

EPIC FAIL



Drudge was less kind:

THE EGO HAS LANDED


Chi-town OUT in Round One for the 2016 Olympics, notwithstanding the epic "sacrifices" of Michelle, Barry, and the Really Big "O" [Oprah].




There are lots of reasons to be against a Chicago Olympics.
--Time to give them to some region that has never hosted (Rio)
--Best to let Tokyo have them before their population is too old to field a single team
--Chicago is beset by so many versions of urban nightmare that no Olympics bid could avoid screwing the poor, enriching the Machine, and endangering the visitors

Sticking it to a breathtakingly narcissistic career-Chicagoan now occupying the White House and screwing the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy of America is way down the list of reasons.

Is this a schadenfreude-free zone? Mmmm, it is hard to resist just a tiny little BWA-HA-HA-HA.

Me? I'm pulling for Madrid.

UPDATE: RIO WINS IT

Footnote [and, pathetically, that's all it is]: Apparently the President did take time out from his Shilling-for-Daley-ville tour to spend 25 minutes with General McChrystal while Air Force One was warming up -- their second conversation since the General was appointed more than two months ago. Afghani-where? Oh, you mean that place where we keep encountering "man-made disasters" from the TAH-LEE-BAHN?....

How's that Hope'n'Change working out for ya? for all of us?

POP CULTURE QUERY:

I've never seen a Quentin Tarantino movie --
is INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS worth a look?

Frederic Raphael at Commentary has a review. I read the first couple of paragraphs and was unsure where he was going with it -- there were indications that he has seen Taratino's other films, as well as various compliments to the artistry. Then, fearing that there might be spoilers in the review, I scrolled to the bottom line to see if he recommended it:

As Harvey Weinstein would surely say, when a job is also a hit, what can possibly be wrong with it, unless you’re some kind of a pussyfooting elitist loser? Inglourious Basterds has to be great because, if the boffo box-office figures are true, people love it. It’s therefore undemocratic to go calling it the antihuman dirty dream of a pretentious, vacuous clown primed with Hollywood gelt to do the Jews a favor by showing that they too, given the chance, coulda/woulda behaved like mindless monsters. What does it matter, after all this time, if the world gets sold the idea that what Shoshanna and the Basterds did to the Nazis was exactly what the Jews would have done to the Germans if Harvey had been around to greenlight the project?

Going to Inglourious Basterds reminded me of Lina Wertmüller’s Seven Beauties, in which a concentration-camp inmate commits liberating suicide by leaping into a lake of sewage. Tarantino makes an even bigger splash by getting us all to pay to jump into an ocean of his own effluent from which he and Harv alone emerge, with $$ carved in their foreheads.

I'm guessing.....not?

Why am I not surprised? I've always had this sense that Tarantino, kind of like Cronenberg, is a man with many innate talents who has volunteered them to be enslaved to a set of truly base appetites. Won't be rushing out to Blockbuster for his oeuvre any time soon.

THE WIDER WORLD

I've been ducking any survey of the News o' the World in recent days, since it's all so very chilling, and the Reader of the Free World so increasingly, ludicrously incompetent at coping with it.

For a dose of major league reality, Michael Yon contributes to the Washington Times this morning. Return in kind by contributing to him, and he'll keep on delivering the straight story, from deep within the belly of the major beasts.

And then there's the hub of representative democracy, where the Democrat[ic?] Party is fixing to use legislative sleight-of-hand to ram through a massive health care bill as an amendment to an unrelated codicil to their earlier economic disastrathon. It's not that difficult to understand, but the Heritage Foundation does a good job of breaking it down. America, get ready to kiss your ass [your liberty, your economic security, your children's future] G'BYE!

UNITED NATIONS FOLLIES:

Gale alert: OBAMA WAGS HIS FINGER AND SAYS "THE MURDER OF INNOCENTS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED"

Is that a fact?

Apparently some innocents are more equal than others.


Meanwhile back at Turtle Bay ["Filmore East", says Dennis Miller]:

CANADA GROWS A PAIR AND VOWS TO WALK OUT ON HOLOCAUST-DENYING MADMOOD AHMADINNERJACKET

Do not mess with these people.


Over at Jewish World Review,

GEORGE WILL SOUNDS OFF ON THE "invertebrate" TELEPROMPTER KING

Bile alert: wear you Mackintosh and wellies, and bring your brolley. Will has clearly run out of patience with The One and the bulk-head of his bile boiler has burst its rivets --tsunami!!!



NOW THAT IRAN IS NEARLY NUCLEAR:

Surprise necessities for survival. Number 1 is, like, so-o-o obvious. [From Popular Mechanics, the magazine for essential debunking in a bunk-filled world -- Katrina, 9/11 "Truthers", etc.] Hat-tip/Instapundit.

WHAT I FOUND WHEN GOOGLED
"OBAMA+U.S.+REPUTATION"


You're gonna love this:

I Googled and got an Inauguration Day post that recounts a December 2008 interview with Worst President Ever Jimmy Carter. Money quote:

...not too long ago somebody asked me if the new President could change the reputation of our country in the first hundred days he was in the office and I said he could change the reputation of our country in the first ten minutes...

How's that reputation enhancement working out for you so far, America?

Well, according to our former friends and allies, the citizens of Poland, it's working out like this:







Translated in English, that would be:


TREASON!









[from their website.:]





















[hat-tip: the increasingly essential, Acorn-busting Gateway Pundit]

Hugh Hewitt makes a neat point:

"The kid's not ready." That's what a friend's father has been saying about Obama since the day he was elected. If Matt Latimer's tacky-by-definition tell-all book is to be believed, it's something Bush said as well. "Not Ready To Lead" is sounding more true all the time ("Always Ready To Campaign" could work nicely, though). As so often with President Obama, we are left to believe that he is either 1) haplessly naive, 2) brilliant beyond measure and playing a game of long ball none of us can comprehend, or 3) not interested in what have traditionally been American interests.

Or he's a triple-threat player.

Hewitt links to this gem at the Corner:

Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, ACORN's gotta engage in fraud, and Obama's gotta talk. It's really that simple; and it is amazing, given how little this guy actually knows about economics, about foreign affairs, about, well, just about anything...

Obama was reported, after the speech [at the 2004 Democratic Convention] and the thunderous reception that it received, to have said to someone, "You know, I can play in this league."

And so there we have it: Obama really believes at his core that empty rhetoric is the same as substance and judgement.

Read it all.

That curious quotation -- "I can play in this league" -- conjures up a later, similar little squeak of hubris, uttered to Harry Reid: "I have a gift" -- reflected on by Daniel Henninger, with considerable prescience, last April. By September, the increasing consensus is that "the gift has stopped giving, because people have started listening."

And just in case anyone wanted to know precisely when it all started to go horribly, horribly wrong for Mr. Obama, that December interview might provide a clue:

Kira: With the new president elect Barack Obama, what do you think about him being the new president elect and do you have any advice for him?

Jimmy Carter: Well, I have already talked to his major appointments - I have talked to the next Secretary of State and the next Security Advisor who will be in the White House with him and I have also yesterday talked with the person who is going to represent him and United States at the United Nations. So, I have already prepared him for some of the things that the Carter Center is doing that he might find helpful.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.


On a final note, during a conversation with popculture rabbi, Michael Medved, something happened to insure that "John McCain's approval rating among conservatives just skyrocketed." [hat-tip/ Gateway Pundit]

McCain broke down and admitted that "President Carter has earned his place as, if not the worst president in history, then certainly the worst in the 20th century."

SAY WHAT?

WHERE WAS THIS STRAIGHT-TALKIN' SENATOR MCCAIN IN 2008?

DOOBIES FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE

Formerly sane pioneer blogger Andrew Sullivan came to the U.S. from Britain but shows that he doesn't really get why we are no longer a colony. Ya, see, Sully, it was all about dissolving the cast-iron divisions between classes, or perhaps going back to medieval times, between the "Estates". Sully has no use for the First Estate, the governing element of The Church. But apparently he is all in favour of retaining the barrier between the Second and Third Estates: The Nobility and The Peasants.

It all unfolded when Sully got caught sucking on his weed-stash by some of the local constabulary, while at Cape Cod National Seashore, a Massachusetts park.


Now, the good folks of the bean-state have reduced penalties for possession to the misdemeanor category, for which reason they are less hesitant to prosecute than if it were a more serious crime. Most ordinary people caught in Sully's circumstances could expect to get convicted and punished, but the U.S. Attorney in question politely declined to prosecute because a criminal conviction might prove an obstacle to poor old Andrew in his quest for "a certain immigration status" (?) in the United States.

Beg pardon? Well, I await correction, but I'm guessin' that this "certain status" is "spousal", applying to Andrew Sullivan because he married his male partner when Massachusetts legalized such arrangements. If that's the case, I can't imagine why it has to be cloaked in mystery. There's no mystery about Andrew. Maybe the "certain status" has nothing to do with his "marriage" -- in which case it's even more puzzling that the relevant documents hesitate to give this immigration status a name.

Whatever kind of status it may be, the more important thing is that the U.S. Attorney showed blatant favouritism in his treatment of the Sullivan case, and Judge Robert Collings, who heard it, while finding it outside his role to demand otherwise, made a clear finding that Sullivan asked for, and was granted, unequal treatment before the law.

Powerline lays out the case. [hat-tip: Hugh Hewitt]

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 + 8


Once again Project 2996 honors the victims of the September 11 terrorist attack on America.

Project 2996 was conceived by Dale Challener Roe, who has tried to repeat the tribute annually over the years. I haven't been part of it since 2006, but I decided to play my part again this year, by repeating my tribute to Jack Aron, and taking on couple of others. The Project assigned me another WTC victim, John Thomas McErlean, and I requested the opportunity to pay tribute to Rick Rescorla.


In 2006 I volunteered to write a tribute to one victim, and was privileged to be introduced to Jack Charles Aron, who died in the offices of Marsh & McLennan in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center. A man I had never met or even heard of before was brought to fleeting life again through the words of his friends, colleagues, and family -- my contribution was to collect and sift through them to bring his portrait into focus. He left behind him a wife, Evelyn, a son Timmy, who is now a young man of 19, and a host of heartbroken friends and relatives. He was one of 295 employees of Marsh & McLennan whose lives were taken that day.


Beth McErlean was looking forward to celebrating her 14th anniversary on September 12th. In 1987 she had married John Thomas McErlean, a high-school sweetheart, now father of her four children and a vice-president and partner at the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald. But when her anniversary day dawned, her husband was missing and presumed dead, his office having fallen from its lofty perch on the top floors of World Trade Center 1 into a disintegrated chaos of twisted metal, ash, and fire.

John McErlean had survived the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. On that day he had carried a woman down 80 flights of stairs. No one knows what he was doing when he met his end in 2001, but his brother Tom figures he was probably engaged in the same sort of service to others.

John Thomas McErlean Jr., a handsome, dark-haired and square-jawed Irishman, grew up in Larchmount, New York. He formed an attachment to that community which drew him there to bring up his own family. He attended Iona, the Catholic boys prep school run by the Irish Christian Brothers in New Rochelle, and then St. Michael's College in Vermont, where he earned his business degree.

In the turbulent years since 9-11, the public has been forced to endure the foul spewings of wretches who need not be named, to the effect that those who died in the towers were symbols rather than human beings, that they represented all the grotesquerie and rapaciousness of American society, even to the extent that they were "little Eichmanns".

Imagine how such a slander would sit upon the relatives of a John McErlean, whose life outside of Manhattan's financial centre made room for being an athlete, a sailor, a coach of children's sports teams, and active member of St. Augustine's Parish. He spent his last summer vacation on Nantucket, flying kites, riding bikes, and building beachside bonfires. John bought a t-shirt that was corny, but whose motto spoke what was for him a profound truth: "Life is Good". "It seems so simple," he said, "but it's true. I've been blessed with a wonderful family and everything I wanted from life." He was 39 years old.

John's son Ryan is now 19, son Timothy 17, daughters Mary and Allie 16 and 12. In their sorrow they have known the generosity of the Larchmont/Mamaroneck Friends in Need organization, which has supported them and, in their mother's words, helped to "remind us all that there is much more good in our world than evil."

Of the nearly 3,000 people who were murdered on September 11 in all three locations, 658 of them were employees of Cantor Fitzgerald -- every single employee who happened to be at his or her desk that morning; the handful who were late, or on vacation, or going about their business out of the office that morning were the only ones left from the entire New York head office. It has been a long road back.


Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11. If not for the heroism of one man, that figure might well have been DOUBLED.

I refer, of course, to the indispensable Rick Rescorla, British/American soldier, hero of Ia Drang at Landing Zone X-Ray in Vietnam, and roly-poly oracle managing security for Dean Witter/Morgan Stanley, who had predicted BOTH World Trade Center bombings (predictions to the Port Authority obviously falling on deaf ears).

You've seen his picture --the iconic pose [taken by the once-reputable and Pulitzered CNN veteran Peter Arnett] on the cover of the best-selling military history, We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, by General Hal Moore, (made into a thrilling film starring Mel Gibson as Moore -- Rescorla is not mentioned in the film despite his key role in the book -- not quite enough room for two heroes!) The book gives an account of a pivotal battle in 1965, which marked the escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam to real all-out war.

It is almost pointless to try and memorialize Rick Rescorla, to pile word upon word after all the words which have been written, by people far closer to Rescorla's reality than myself. I've learned most of what I know about him from military blogs like Mudville Gazette [excellent video there] and Blackfive. There are numerous websites devoted to him and his story -- his many stories, since the several phases of his career are each worth their own book. The skeleton of the history goes thus:

Born: 1939 Hayle, Cornwall, the old Celtic kingdom at the far southwest reach of England.

British Service: 1956-1963 Paratrooper, Cyprus and Northern Rhodesia

American Service: 1963-1990 Colonel, U.S. Army, 1st Cavalry Division

I saw Rick Rescorla come swaggering into our lines with a smile on his face . . . saying, ‘Good, good, good. I hope they hit us with everything they’ve got tonight. We’ll wipe them up,’ " recalled Lt. Larry Gwinn in the 1993 book, We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young. Rick took a bullet in the arm and fought for six hours before the battle he called "a long, bloody traffic accident in the jungle" ended.

More than 300 men died at Ia Drang. Rick earned a Silver Star, a Purple Heart and Bronze Stars for Valor and Meritorious Service..."We were flown away," Rick said to the authors [of We Were Soldiers] "but the stench of the dead would stay with me for years after the battle." [more here]

Security work:
1985 -- joined Morgan Stanley to manage and advise on corporate security

1990 -- concluded from a security review of the WTC that it was vulnerable to terrorist attack, most likely a truck bomb in its underground parking garage

1993 --predictions fulfilled -- Rescorla "jumped on a desk in the middle of the firm and threatened to drop his pants if his people didn't chill out and listen. In the stunned silence that followed, he launched an orderly evacuation, refusing to leave until the entire tower was empty." Following this attack he became convinced that there would be another, more deadly, probably involving airplanes. He advised his employers to move their offices to New Jersey, but they were not persuaded.

September 11, 2001 -- After the north WTC tower was hit by an airplane, Rick Rescorla initiated a timely evacuation (punctuated by his bouts of folksongs and patriotic anthems through a bullhorn) of thousands of Morgan Stanley employees from the south WTC tower, ignoring assurances from the Port Authority that his people were safe and need not move. He went back and back again, to clear as much of the building as he could, for long enough that there are at least a dozen stories of "sightings" and phone calls made while he did his duty protecting his charges. In the end he went in for a last round-up, and was not seen again.

Rick Rescorla was one of only SIX Morgan Stanley employees who did not survive on 9/11. He saved the lives of nearly 2,700 people in the south tower. [Another 1,000 from Building 5 also evacuated safely at his order.]

Rick Rescorla gave his life doing what he had always done, with the dedication and skill he had acquired during his military career. Many of his fellow soldiers have signed on to the effort to award him the Congressional Medal of Honor, for which he is technically ineligible because he had retired from the reserves and did not die in military service.

Surely he is a proper candidate for America's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In any case, the living recipients of the Congressional Medal awarded him their own honor, the Above And Beyond Citizen's Medal, in March of 2009.


Other military personnel have honoured Rescorla in their own way. FOB Rescorla (forward operating base) was established near Farah, Afghanistan. Blending the sublime and the ridiculous, in a way that the honoree would no doubt appreciate, a fitting mural decorates one of the FOB latrines.

Likewise, a beautiful bronze statue, based on Arnett's photograph, has been unveiled at the National Infantry Museum at Ft. Benning Georgia.


Heroes come in all shapes and sizes and vocations. The heroism of a man like Rick Rescorla deserves monuments and wide public recognition. But every good father is a hero to his children, and does heroic service to society by being just that. We throw that word "hero" around a little promiscuously, even as applied to the victims of 9/11. I count myself lucky to be given the opportunity to salute and remember on this day three men who seem to me to deserve that title, for services large and small.

Jack, John, Rick -- in your name, and for all the others

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.

[For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon, September 1914]

SCOLD-IN-CHIEF GRABS THE AIRWAYS
FOR SPEECH # 18,642
ABOUT HEALTH-CARE-INSURANCE-REFORM-
EVERYBODY'S-A-LIAR-BUT-ME

Gateway Pundit covers the "liar" charge aimed directly (minus only her name) at Sarah Palin.

Never mind that the speech itself piled falsehood upon falsehood, contradicting not only what common sense tells us about the legislation on the table, but also what candidate, and then President, Obama has said in one speech or interview after another.

And someone yelled, "You lie!"

Imagine.

Joe Wilson -- no, not that Joe Wilson, but a Republican Congressman from South Carolina -- exploded at just one in a series of mendacities flowing from the slick lips of El Bambo. He did use the word "lie", which would have gotten him banished from the British Parliament -- but then again, if the American congress allowed for any of the free-wheeling back-and-forth, not to mention the chief executive facing the assembly during a Question Period, maybe the poor congressman wouldn't have lost control of his tongue -- a simple "shame, shame" or "balderdash" would have sufficed.

Instapundit covers the whole question from a variety of sources, including reader James Somers, who opined that:

...it might also be noted that a lot of Democrats and MSM journalists (same thing, I know) who suddenly have the vapors over Joe Wilson’s breach of decorum thought it was just dandy when an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at President Bush...The point is that lefties loved Sticking It To The Man when Chimpy McHitler was president, but now they’re prissily toting around copies of Robert’s Rules of Order.

Velvet-tongued Veep Joe Biden deplored this outburst, as did asp-tongued California flake, Rep. Maxine Waters. And then, of course, the ever-accomodating Senator John McCain urged an immediate apology from Wilson (which did occur) -- forcing us to wonder whether he ever did the same when President Bush was hooted and booed at during an address in the same august assembly.

John Hinderaker at PowerLine [hat-tip: Instapundit] does a thorough analysis of the speech, which he read rather than watched. He guesses that the delivery was Obama standard: "smooth, generally flat, occasionally a bit whiny." Having watched only a few excerpts during the Fox de-briefing, I would say that Hinderaker missed those other qualities that often creep into the Obama delivery, that is, the snippy, scolding sense of irritation that his critics won't roll over and button up in the face of his fundamental superiority. Still, Hinderaker catches that element in the tone of the words, and nails this phenomenon straight-on:

I'm not sure whether Obama and his handlers understand how this sort of talk grates on those of us who are not liberal Democrats (a large majority of the country). Debating public policy issues is not "bickering." Disagreeing with a proposal to radically change one of the largest sectors of our economy is not a "game." This kind of gratuitous insult--something we never heard from President Bush, for example--is one of the reasons why many consider Obama to be mean-spirited.

Hinderaker closes his piece with the ultimate "bottom line":

This was not, to put it kindly, a speech that was directed at thinking people.

Nor, as the writer points out, did it seem to be directed at a people who have ever heard of YouTube, where there is evidence aplenty that Mr. Obama will take any position, at any given moment, if it suits that moment, regardless of how diametrically opposed it is to the position he took the moment before.

Over at American Thinker, Geoffrey Hunt predicts for Obama a "spectacularly failed presidency." A whole bunch of things are going wrong, but Hunt hits on the one that is becoming increasingly obvious:

Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us...

It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience...

In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, P.J. O'Rourke was talking "failed presidency" last November.


Today's comic relief:

The president is the descendant of slave-owners. [It must be true -- I read it in the New York Times.] Can we expect him to fork over some reparation bucks any time soon? Boy, it makes me glad my ancestors came over in steerage from Ireland in the 1840's, Germany in the 1880's, and Greece in 1905 -- it means I never benefited from slavery no-now, and don't owe nobody nuttin'.

Apparently Obama's also related to Confederate President Jefferson Davis -- Adams, Harrison, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Gore, Bush, Dodd, Chafee....dynasties anyone?

Comic relief, part deux:

Buffalo's WBEN local talk guy, Sandy Beach, just opened his show with the suggestion that the next time President O'Whopper gives a speech, he should just arrange to have it in a church so the kneelers will be in place.

Heh.