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Sarah Palin = 1, Saul Alinsky = 0

Less is fewer? Why would you write "in less than" 140 characters when you knew the proper grammar would be "in fewer than"? [see Usage Note] Because you were twittering and honing your prose to keep the tweet count to at or below 140 characters, that's why. The written language evolving right before our eyes. Above, the eyes have it in fanciful Sunday breakfast fruit bowl with melon, strawberry-infused apple and blueberries.

Like President Obama when it comes to the rationale behind police work in Cambridge, when it comes to the rationale behind Sarah Palin's stepping down from her Alaska governorship Sunday, Palinologists have a nasty habit of rushing to judgment in a fact-challenged cloud of psychological denial and projection, curiously incurious about what makes "the other" tick. Why did she really quit? Scroll down beyond Mr. Potatoskin Head (below) for the answer, but first let's review the narrative. Most talking heads cast Palin's exit as a disastrous admission of defeat, but as Carl Cameron said when the Alaska Governor first announced her decision three-plus weeks back:

She's done it again. To some, it's the end of her career. To others, it's the start of her presidential campaign.

And as we blogged at the time:

Like Barack Obama, Sarah Palin can be a blank canvas upon which huddled masses yearning to breathe free — or in Obama's case, huddled masses yearning to be on the dole — project their inchoate longings. The difference is that while Obama speaks from the latest polls, Palin — in Fox Brit ex pat Stuart Varney's words — "speaks from the heart, and maybe that's what Americans want."

Forget about 140 or fewer characters. Tuck trumps Twitter with a postprandial Tw-eat that says "Great meal!" in five menu items: baked stuffed potato skin, mushroom, Stroganoff sauce, sweet potato puree and peas.

John Fund had put his finger on the problem weeks ago, reporting that frivolous "attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration." Adding at least the appearance of impropriety to the series of accusations, it was reported last week that "the independent investigator who has accused Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of violating state ethics laws is a major donor to the Democratic Party as well as a partner in a law firm that represented Barack Obama's presidential campaign."

But it was the self-described "Rodeo Clown" with a mission and a microphone, Fox News supernova Glenn Beck who connected the dots the other day with this 140-characters-or-fewer tweet [via KatyinIndy]:

Sarah P. Think like a Comm organizer.They were overloading the system. She is 6 steps ahead. VERY SMART lady.

Expanding beyond 140 characters, Palin recognized that her adversaries — from the dirt-digging thugs on the ground to the fancy lawyers and their bosses behind the curtain — were soldiers in an Alinskyesque, Cloward-Piven-inspired army of "community organizers" out to destroy her and the small-government, free-market principles she stands and fights for by sowing discontent from within the system. Understanding their modus operandi, she outfoxed them, quoting Gen. MacArthur as she exited stage right victorious [via goparchitect]:

We are not retreating; we are advancing in another direction.

Coda: "This guy has a social justice agenda," Glenn Beck told Fox & Friends this morning:

He is going to set all of the wrongs of the past right.

I have a feeling that the paradigm is about to change.

People who have been forced to live in a politically correct world … are just going to say "I'm not living in your politically correct world, and I don't care anymore." You've never seen the media really go after him. He's never really been cornered. How does he react?

The people he surrounds himself with, have you heard them with new ears? When you put in a science czar who has advocated forced abortions and made the case that we could put sterilants into the water to control the births, something's very wrong.

Tea party!

Update: Music to my ears:

Cambridge cop on Obama: 'I voted for him. I will not again."

Listen and take heart. The City Upon a Hill is shining still!

Update II: "Dan Riehl = 1, Palin haters = 0," we wrote in the comments to Dan's perfect-pitch "Sarah Palin: They Just Don't Get Her, Or Us." Thanks for the linky love!

"A virtual ticker-tape parade"

The term "ticker-tape parade originated in New York City after a spontaneous celebration held on October 29, 1886 during the dedication of the Statue of Liberty," a fitting precedent to Saturday's virtual ticker-tape parade, Victory in Iraq Day, dedicated to the liberation of the Iraqi people thanks to the hard work and gritty determination of our own US and coalition forces and the Iraqi military under the stalwart leadership of President George W. Bush. (Unattributed photo of ticker-tape parade celebrating the nation's Bicentennial, New York, July 1976)

"We won. The Iraq War is over," writes Zombie Time [via Instapundit], boldly declaring Saturday, November 22, 2008 "Victory in Iraq Day," an opportunity for "us, the people, to arrange a virtual ticker-tape parade. An online victory celebration":

By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won.

What more indication do you need? An announcement from the outgoing Bush administration? It's not gonna happen. An announcement from the incoming Obama administration? That's really not gonna happen. A declaration of victory by the media? Please. Don't make me laugh. A concession of surrender by what few remaining insurgents remain in hiding? Forget about it.

The moment has come to acknowledge the obvious. To overtly declare a fact that has already been true for quite some time now … And since there will never be a ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue in New York for our troops, it's up to us, the people, to arrange a virtual ticker-tape parade. An online victory celebration.

"We also no longer hear about 'the Bush-Petraeus surge,' as Sen. Chuck Schumer dubbed it in September 2007," wrote John McCormack in The Weekly Standard last summer, noting that the Democratic opposition — Soviet style — removed the President and his General from the picture once it had become glaringly obvious that the surge had succeeded. (Getty Images photo of General Petraeus and President Bush in the Oval Office last spring as the President "reiterated his vow to veto any spending bill that puts a timetable on withdrawal of troops from Iraq.")

An inspired idea to lift our hearts and reaffirm our conviction that the national "narrative" being promulgated these many years by our betters on the left side of the aisle inside the Beltway and their fellow travelers in the Fourth Estate is a tangled web of lies and half truths, the product of a relentless campaign "to tarnish the Republican brand." Get that jackboot off your neck, fellow bloggers, and celebrate the truth that will make us free! How to participate:

Just make a post on your blog on Saturday, November 22, announcing that the war is over, and declaring that day to be Victory in Iraq Day …

Once you've posted it, email me the link! And I will post a link back to your blog here on this page.

Make sure to make at least two different postings: Make one now to announce your support of VI Day and to spread the word ahead of time, and make another one on November 22 itself, to celebrate!

Free banner design for Victory in Iraq Day by Bryan Taylor of Black Eye Digital.

Lots more info and images at Zombie Time to help you plan your own contribution to Victory in Iraq Day:

Keep reading below to find: evidence that the war is over (for the doubters); an historical discussion of previous postwar occupations and guerrilla violence; a list of blogs which have already joined the VI Day movement; free banners and graphics for you to download and put on your blog, if you so choose; and an invitation to submit your own "victory graphics" for posting here.

Bring 'em on!

"Our hearts are one with theirs"

"God of understanding, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy, we seek your light and guidance as we confront such terrible events," Pope Benedict XVI prayed with family members at Ground Zero April 20, 2008. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

"But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard" (Leviticus 25). Before moving on to our usual contentious cogitations on this seventh anniversary of that unholy day, let us pray with Benedetto. Excerpts from the Pope's benediction during his visit to Ground Zero last spring. (Full transcript here):

We ask you in your goodness
to give eternal light and peace
to all who died here—
the heroic first-responders:
our fire fighters, police officers,
emergency service workers, and Port Authority personnel,
along with all the innocent men and women
who were victims of this tragedy
simply because their work or service
brought them here on September 11, 2001 …

Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families
and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy.
Give them strength to continue their lives with courage and hope.

We are mindful as well
of those who suffered death, injury, and loss
on the same day at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Our hearts are one with theirs
as our prayer embraces their pain and suffering …

Turn to your way of love
those whose hearts and minds
are consumed with hatred …

Grant that those whose lives were spared
may live so that the lives lost here
may not have been lost in vain …

—Pope Benedict XVI Prayer at Ground Zero, New York, 20 April 2008

Contentious cogitations will return shortly. Teaser: "Pope, During Visit to France, Will Try To Bridge Gap Between Faith, Reason."

Update: Miss Kelly links: "My prayers go out to President Bush, who has certainly done something right to prevent further terrorist attacks." Like Papa Ratzi, kindred spirit George W — "the nation's first Catholic president?" — is a rock, and we have faith that history will vindicate him.

Caught with our pajama bottoms down

If you're known by the company you keep, our own Betsy Ross Secret Soup (left) and Pajamas Media A-List blogger Roger Kimball (right) were caught with their pajama bottoms down this afternoon:

Who's that hussy, left, pretty in black, drawing the viewer's eye away from our patriotic bowl of soup? A super-sized-me lingerie model for Catherine's Plus Sizes 16W – 34W, that's who.

Same gal, together with a colleague, pretty in white, who's making our head spin as Roger Kimball's dapper image goes head-to-torso with the kind of thing that used to be hidden away in our day in the back pages of movie and women's magazines. Beyond the visual shock, shock, was the humorous disjunct between blogger's and advertiser's copy.

Take our own post, for starters, where we interspersed excerpts from the Declaration with anectodal reportage of our festive Fourth-of-July family gathering down east. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" vies with "Buy one, get one 50% off. 18 Hour Comfort Strap bra: A favorite for the comfort it delivers." But come to think of it, isn't that what the Founding Fathers were after? "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," however defined by the individual. Not to mention that the business of America is business. We say, bring 'em on!

Then there are Roger Kimball's cogitations on the undermining of American identity under fire from the cacophonous chorus of the cacodemons of pc and so-called multiculturalism — "really a form of mono-cultural animus directed against the dominant culture":

These various agents of dissolution are also elements in a wider culture war: the contest to define how we live and what counts as the good in the good life. Anti-Americanism occupies such a prominent place on the agenda of the culture wars precisely because the traditional values of American identity — articulated by the Founders and grounded in a commitment to individual liberty and public virtue — are deeply at odds with the radical, de-civilizing tenets of the “multiculturalist” enterprise.

Public virtue? When it comes to those Catherine's ads, the jury's still out, but if you're taking talking individual liberties, they're downright uplifting.

Update: Is that a Freudian slip bra?" asks Dr. Sanity in the latest Carnival of the Insanities, now open for business.

Update II: Is nothing sacred? Roger himself gets upstaged by the larger, lovelier "comfort strap bra" woman:

"Ah, the sophisticated voice of the Zabar’s Zeitgeist."

Update III: A pretty girl may be like a melody, but that ubiquitous plus-size model is to our eyes like unwelcome elevator Musak to our ears:

Gentlemen. There are ladies present.

"In France, you can't own up to a mistake"

 

Our Heartland professors, nephew and wife Matt and Regan, are immersing themselves in Middlebury's seven-week French-language program, where students "use their target language exclusively in classes, dining halls, dormitories, and co-curricular activities." No English allowed. We've been encouraged to email them early and often, but only in French. 'Were delighted to learn via Yahoo's "Babel Fish" translation program that we are married to a "fold." That's their translation of Tuck. “But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.” Above, two kinds of French fold, the napkin version, left, and the paper one.

"In France, you can't own up to a mistake," writes Anne-Elisabeth Moutet in "L'Affaire Enderlin" at The Weekly Standard. She's talking about the latest wrinkle in the ongoing legal wranglings over al-Dura — blogged here from time to time — a signature episode in the life-and-death struggle for hearts and minds that is the Israeli-Palestinian propaganda wars:

So, in the case of Muhammad al-Dura — a 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli fire during a skirmish in the Gaza strip on September 30, 2000 — it was not really to be expected that the journalist who released the 59-second news report, Charles Enderlin, longtime Jerusalem correspondent for France 2 TV, would immediately admit having hastily slapped together sensational footage supplied by the channel's regular Palestinian stringer, and not checked whose bullets had, in fact, killed, or perhaps even not killed, the boy.

In the ensuing eight years, the small figure of Muhammad al-Dura cowering beside his crouching father became the defining image of the second Intifada. The "child martyr's" picture cropped up on posters, websites, postage stamps, and street names throughout the Muslim world from Mali to Indonesia, fueling lynchings and suicide bombings

Yet another egregious example of the big lie's ability to travel halfway around the world while the truth is either putting on its shoes or getting its pants on, and the court battles to get those shoes and pants on have dragged on for years, giving substance to the old saw that "justice delayed is justice denied." Can anything be done about it? Yes. Dogged determination is where it's at. Our own sub rosa blog friend, the distinguished Boston University professor of medieval history Richard Landes, has been on the case for years. He's the one who coined the term "Pallywood" to refer to "the staging of scenes by Palestinian journalists in order to present the Palestinians as hapless victims of Israeli aggression." As Richard explained at The Second Draft, politically correct, multicultural fellow travelers in the MSM are the Palestinian journalists' willing enablers:

They are able to succeed in this endeavor in large part due to the credulity and eagerness of the Western press to present these images, which reinforce the image of the Palestinian David struggling valiantly against the overpowering Israeli Goliath. Pallywood has led to astonishing lapses in Western journalistic standards in which badly staged scenes regularly appear on the news as "real events."

Then, as we wrote a month back, "the French court pleasantly surprised the seekers-of-wisdom-and-truth community this week by dismissing charges brought against [French media watchdog Philip] Karsenty by truthiness-monger France2." That was a breath of fresh air, but the forces of darkness — the totalitarian instinct that is our birthright — are forever lurking beyond the light of the campfire. No sooner had the court ruled than French journalism's old-cowboy network circled the wagons. More from Moutet's Weekly Standard report:

You might think Enderlin's professional standing would have been damaged by all this. You would be wrong. In less than a week, a petition was whipped up by his friends at Le Nouvel Observateur, France's premier left-wing newsweekly. The petition conceded no gray areas, no hint of doubt. It called Karsenty's vehemently argued but exhaustively documented stance a "seven-year hate-filled smear campaign" aimed at destroying Enderlin's "professional dignity." It flatly stated in the opening paragraph that Muhammad al-Dura was killed "by shots coming from the Israeli position." It expressed rank astonishment at a legal ruling "granting equal credibility to a journalist renowned for his rigorous work, and to willful deniers ignorant of the local realities and with no journalistic experience." It professed concern about a jurisprudence that would — shock! horror! — allow "anyone, in the name of good faith and of a supposed right to criticize and so-called freedom of speech, to smear with impunity the honor and the reputation of news professionals."

Moutet placed calls to a number of the signers, several of whom hadn't even read the petition they signed. One of our favorite responses:

There was the noted Paris-based former Washington Post foreign correspondent, 75-year-old Jon Randal, a Middle East expert I'd looked up to for years as a cub reporter, who trenchantly explained that he was seeing in all this a dangerous American trend of "vindictive pressure groups interfering with news organizations," now unfortunately crossing the Atlantic. (Having lived in Paris for over 40 years, Jon had become alarmingly French.)

"Americans have been under the gun of such people for some time, but France used to be free of this kind of thing. [These groups] are paranoid, they're persistent, they never give up, they sap the energy of good reporters. I can't imagine how much money France 2 has spent defending this case. Charles Enderlin is an excellent journalist! I don't care if it's the Virgin Birth affair, I would tend to believe him. Someone like Charles simply doesn't make a story up."

God bless America and those "vindictive pressure groups" and "such people" as Richard Landes who will call the self-appointed arbiters of "truth" to task.

"Because we sailed too close to the shore"

"For the beauty of the earth, For the Glory of the skies…" Grapefruit and lilacs for breakfast Down East early morning.

"I'm savoring the revealing contrast between Drake's seafaring 'reach for the stars' vision and Michelle Obama's landlocked 'audacity of whining' (Powerline's expression)," we wrote in the comments of Bird Dog's totally awesome "Annual re-post: Sir Francis Drake's Prayer (1577) at Maggie's Farm.

Sir Francis:

Disturb us Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore…

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

What we said two Mem Days back still applies, big time: "Sunrise this morning over Eastern Point across the river from Goomp's, headquarters for the family's Memorial Day salute to the awesomely brave and good and true fellow Americans who give their all so we might enjoy such natural wonders. We think you know who you are, our beloved fellow bloggers and readers who serve and love those who serve. We cannot thank you enough. God bless."

Michelle Obama:

You start working hard and sacrificing, and you think you’re getting closer to the bar, you’re working and you’re struggling, you get right to that bar, you’re reaching out for the bar, and then what happens?

They raise the bar. Raise the bar. Shift it to the side. Keep it just out of reach.

"Let us not wallow in the valley of despair," Martin Luther King famously said:

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream.

Is Michelle Obama "too pleased with herself," venturing on Francis Drake's "wilder seas" even as she urges her listeners to instead "dream too little" and sail "too close to the shore"? The soft bigotry of low expectations?

One picture is worth a thousand blogposts

"While the MSM slept, Michael Yon -- the self-employed, reader-empowered embedded journalist blogger reporting from the front -- captured the spirit of the age in one amateur photograph that has touched the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens in spades," we wrote two years back re the citizen journalist's image of Major Beiger cradling a fatally wounded Iraqi child.

"Our soldiers, those from countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, France (yes, France) and the United States, are better in all aspects but one," wrote independent journalist and former Green Beret Michael Yon last March in "Ernie is dead," a FOXNews.com dispatch blogged here:

The terrorists somehow manage to beat us in our respective medias. We may own the air, but terrorists own the airwaves.

I believe we are losing the war in Afghanistan, but I have strong hope for Iraq. Nearly all of America and Europe believe Iraq is a lost cause, but there is hope here, and it lives in the thousands of stories about this place that are never told because they have not been witnessed by our media, or at least not reported.

The surge was just getting under way back then, even as broken-record types like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Murtha & Company were stuck on all is lost, it's time to cut and run, and it's all Bush's fault.

"The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people," the "blogosphere's own Ernie Pyle," Michael Yon sets the scene for this image of "men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome." © Michael Yon 2007*

Now comes Michael Yon's latest photograph (above) to touch the hearts and minds -- and typing fingers -- of the immediate blogosphere. Gaius of  Blue Crab Boulevard has a good roundup of one-liners. Michelle Malkin is calling it an "iconic image of hope and unity in Iraq," and Wretchard of The Belmont Club compares Yon's image to Joe Rosenthal's flag-raising at Iwo Jima, musing "There are times when a single picture captures the essence of an entire campaign. Maybe Michael Yon's picture from Baghdad has done it for the surge":

It's important to remember that the flag raising on Suribachi occurred on the fourth day of a campaign that would last a month longer. In the War against extremism, as in Iwo Jima, the worst may be yet to come. But it's good to take a deep breath and remember what the journey is all about.

Instapundit reader John Ramsay sees "a poignant contrast with this picture":

From the caption of our early-Surge post "A vicious circle of shortsighted sanctimony" of last January: “By the time we reached the embassy, the gates were shuttered and armed Marines were standing guard above the concrete walls . . . Thousands of desperate Vietnamese, screaming and begging, were trying to climb the walls and get through the coils of barbed wire, only to be pushed back into the street by none-too-gentle rifle butts,” wrote Newsweek reporter Loren Jenkins of our countrymen's ignominious cut-and-run exit from Saigon when the city fell to the North Vietnamese in April of 1975. (Photo unattributed)

Indeed. 'Wish we'd thought of that. Great fodder for a new post or even a new category: The Good, the Bad and the Smugly?

"The toppling of Saddam’s statue seemed like the iconic moment, but it proved only to be the first frame," notes Jules Crittenden:

"Unlike the Saddam shot, an image of tearing down the old evil, Yon’s captured the Iraqis putting something up, restoring something good, themselves. There is still a lot of fighting and dying ahead, but here’s an image of hope and determination, a sign that victory might not be too far off.

Fighting with "hope and determination" for "something good" against "the old evil." It sounds downright American. Then there's The Anchoress's deep, dark and delicious take:

What I see in this picture is something more than a historic moment -- I don’t even know if that’s what we should call it -- I see the sort of thing people do when they are neighbors, when they are working together for their neighborhood, for the good of all who live there, and that makes it seem less “historic” than calmly, wonderfully normal, ordinary, wholesome and sane. I see tolerance, which so many are so certain cannot exist in Iraq -- or anywhere in the Middle East.Tolerance in the best sense of the word -- converting no one, insisting on nothing beyond ordinary acceptance; tolerance that gives people room to live their lives.

Day by Day says it all in 3022 words (three pictures = 3000 words + 22 words of text).

One picture is worth a thousand blogposts?

*NOTE. "Michael Yon is making this photograph available to media outlets, such as print publications and cable and television news broadcasts, at no cost for a limited period of time . . . He is entirely reader supported . . . If you value his work, please consider supporting  his mission."

"Dictatorships poison everything in their grasp"

"Dictatorships poison everything in their grasp, from political institutions right down to relationships between fathers and sons," a WSJ reporter notes re the I-was-there message of Peruvian dissident Mario Vargas Llosa. Above, Goomp's keeping-room table in the early-morning light on Father's Day.

"The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship," novelist Mario Vargas Llosa told WSJ's Emily Parker when she visited his home in Lima recently [subscription only]:

Mr. Vargas Llosa discovered that this phenomenon was hardly limited to Latin America. "I went to Iraq after the invasion," he tells me. "When I heard stories about the sons of Saddam Hussein, it seemed like I was in the Dominican Republic, hearing stories about the sons of Trujillo! That women would be taken from the street, put in automobiles and simply presented like objects . . . The phenomenon was very similar, even with such different cultures and religions." He concludes: "Brutality takes the same form in dictatorial regimes."

"Did this mean that Mr. Vargas Llosa supported the invasion of Iraq?" Parker wondered:

"I was against it at the beginning," he says. But then he went to Iraq and heard accounts of life under Saddam Hussein. "Because there has been so much opposition to the war, already one forgets that this was one of the most monstrous dictatorships that humanity has ever seen, comparable to that of Hitler, or Stalin." He changed his mind about the invasion: "Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt."

There's nothing like having lived under the jackboot to keep things in perspective:

"This is a story that often repeated itself," Mario Vargas Llosa says. "If a father was a businessman, he was a man who had to be complicit with the dictatorship. It was the only way to prosper, right? And what happens is that the son discovers it, the son is young, restless, idealistic, believes in justice and liberty, and he finds out that his vile father is serving a dictatorship that assassinates, incarcerates, censors and is corrupted to the bone."

Mr. Vargas Llosa could have plucked this scenario from his personal recollections of living under dictatorial rule in Peru. But he tells this story to make a more universal point: Dictatorships poison everything in their grasp, from political institutions right down to relationships between fathers and sons.

Father's Day sunrise looking out over the mouth of the river down Goomp's last weekend.

Vargas Llosa himself believes "that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated":

If you live in a country where there is nothing comparable to free information, often literature becomes the only way to be more or less informed about what's going on.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work so well in jackboot-free nations like our own, where the careless assumption of freedom as a given leaves a comfortable, intellectually lazy citizenry all too ripe for manipulation.

"All the sounds of the earth are like music"

Sunrise at Camelot-by-the-Sea Down East this morning.

We're trying to reconcile this year's image (above) with last year's Memorial-Day-Weekend sunrise shot of May 28, 2006 (below) from Goomp's front lawn, where the sun appears to be far more northerly (leftward in photos). We  thought we were standing in about the same spot when we clicked the shutter this morning. The silhouette of the 19th-century summer cottage in both shots supports that impression. Hmmm. Maybe the clouds were playing tricks on our photographic eye? Whatever the case, the summer solstice -- when the sun rises way to the left of the cottage -- is well on its way.

We second our caption of one year ago today when we wrote "Sunrise this morning over Eastern Point across the river from Goomp's, headquarters for the family's Memorial Day salute to the awesomely brave and good and true fellow Americans who give their all so we might enjoy such natural wonders. We think you know who you are, our beloved fellow bloggers and readers who serve and love those who serve. We cannot thank you enough. God bless."

Baby Cakes draws a bead on catbirds outside the window plucking up ants from the anthills on Goomp's seaside terrace early morning.

"All the sounds of the earth are like music" goes the opening song of Rogers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma," the bracing "Oh, what a beautiful morning." It resonates this Memorial Day Eve with all the windows open and the birds singing and rustling up chow down here on the southern coast of Maine as we rise to meet the day. You can't get any better than Papa Ratzi's message from his historic Kracow mass a year ago today: "Keep the faith, keep the hope, keep the love." Googling back a little, we stumbled upon a keeper of our own, "Your loved ones' lives had what we all want: meaning."

The broken wishbone

"Two arguments in favor of the whole bird," we wrote back in November of 2004, the first anniversary of the MSMs faux plastic turkey debacle: 1) the wishbone itself, together with 2) an hours-long-in-the-making culinary joy, turkey stew from homemade post-Thanksgiving stock and fixin's. (Turkey wishbone 2004 simmering in broth, above)

"The Iraqis (or Indians) working in the mess hall in Iraq seem to take more pride in helping to support our troops than our own representatives in the House and Senate," writes Laura Lee, sharing with her readers this poignant report from her own soldier at the front, who emails:

I went to eat tonight at the mess hall and I had been going to the sandwich bar the last few days trying to see if they had any turkey, but the guy there didn’t have any, so the last couple days it’s been either salami or ham.

Tonight I saw they had turkey and I guess the guy knew who I was (not sure if he’s Iraqi or what, probably from India) anyway, he seemed pretty happy that this time when I asked for turkey he could say, “Yes I have turkey.” So I said, “Great. I’ll take a turkey sub”, but he said, “No. I will make two turkey sandwiches for the big strong Captain.”

The other guy that works there counted the slices and he put like ten on each sandwich, then he laughed and said, “You are an Army Captain and I am the Sandwich Bar Captain.”

Here's the broken wishbone that sticks in Laura's craw:

Shame on John Warner, Gordon Smith, Susan Collins, Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snow, Norm Coleman, and Sam Brownback, Republicans all, who are revealing themselves to be no different than the Cut and Run crowd with their pathetic flirtations/efforts to come up with nonbinding resolutions against President Bush’s decision to send more troops into Iraq.

I do not expect anything of the Democrats of course, except for Independent Democrat, Joe Lieberman. But these Republicans in name only are despicable turncoats and not worth one slice of turkey placed on any soldier’s bread.

Pouring on a little gravy, here's what we wrote in Laura Lee's comments:

Warner and Coleman are the biggest disappointments . . . I had foolishly looked to them as wiser heads . . . The story from your young man at the front, as usual, brings tears of sorrow and hope to these tired old eyes . . . Have you seen Fox News' bold new self promotions, two that I've noticed in the last 24 hours?

1. America has problems. America is not the problem.

2. Fox News . . . The only cable network where you won't find left-wing bias . . .

We shall overcome!

When the MSM Captains decided a few weeks back that "stay the course" was a no-no, their typing- and talking-head troops marched in lockstep -- to the delight of the enemy -- spreading the plastic-turkey word that we couldn't -- shouldn't? -- win this war. Fortunately, those on the front and those like Laura Lee and ourselves and our fellow homefire burners in the blogosphere, on talk radio and on Fox News have gathered together to ask the Lord's blessing and aren't buying. Abraham Lincoln's words at Gettysburg resonate:

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Surges and escalations notwithstanding, GW is sending in reinforcements. Stand and fight!