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"He bought and sold, and sometimes people lost their jobs"

"The similarities are unmistakable: Both were war heroes, mavericks within their own party, reformers and defenders of the little guy," writes the WSJs Stephen Moore re John McCain's identification with his American hero, Teddy Roosevelt. Above left, John Alexander in "Arsenic and Old Lace" as Teddy Brewster, the batty brother who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt taking San Juan Hill as he charges up the stairs yelling "Charge!" John McCain, right, trying to keep a lid on his "intense and combative personality." (Photo credits unavailable)

"He bought and sold, and sometimes people lost their jobs; that’s the nature of business,” scathed the "inevitable" candidate, John McCain, at the CNN debate held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley last night --- with Air Force One in all its glory as backdrop -- revealing his contempt for the business of America in a schoolboyish attempt to cut his better, Mitt Romney, down to size. "His philosophy is best described as a work in progress," writes WSJ editorial board member Steven Moore, who interviewed the Republican frontrunner last week:

He is refreshingly blunt when he tells me: "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated." OK, so who does he turn to for advice? His answer is reassuring. His foremost economic guru is former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm (who would almost certainly be Treasury secretary in a McCain administration). He's also friendly with the godfather of supply-side economics, Arthur Laffer.

But Mr. McCain is no antitax supply-sider himself. He grandstanded against the Bush capital-gains and dividend tax cuts and even co-sponsored an amendment with Tom Daschle to scuttle the reduction in the highest income-tax rates. Why? "I just thought it was too tilted to the wealthy and I still do. I want to cut the taxes on the middle class." Even when I confront him with emphatic evidence that those tax cuts have been an economic triumph and have increased revenues, he is unrepentant and defends his "no" vote by falling back on class-warfare type thinking: "We have a wealth gap in this country, and that worries me."

Unfortunately for the future of the Republic should McCain or either of the front-running Democrats -- who all of them seem to believe a President can and should "manage" the economy rather than step back and let the invisible hand create wealth -- should one of them become Leader of the Free World, we'll have an Economics 101 gap in the Oval Office, and THAT worries us and Thomas Sowell, whose Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy ought to be at the top of the Arizona senator's must-read list. From Professor Sowell's latest column:

One of the biggest problems with government intervention in the economy is that politicians usually have neither the knowledge nor the incentives to intervene at the right time.

Bruce Bartlett has pointed out that most government intervention in an economic downturn comes too late. That is, the problem it is trying to solve has already worked itself out and the government intervention can create new problems.

More fundamentally, markets readjust themselves for a reason. That reason is that people pay a price for their misjudgments and mistakes. Government interventions are usually based on trying to stop them from having to pay that price. People who went way out on a limb to buy a house that they could not afford are now being pictured as victims of a heartless market or deceptive lenders.

Moore's diagnosis of McCain's economics knowledge gap:

And in this very moment it becomes clear to me that John McCain aspires to be a modern-day [Teddy Roosevelt]. The similarities are unmistakable: Both were war heroes, mavericks within their own party, reformers and defenders of the little guy.

But here in a nutshell lies the danger of the McCain view of the world. Where some see the vast virtue of entrepreneurial wealth-generators and job-producers, he too often sees "robber barons." He seems forever in search of the next Joe Camel, Charles Keating, Ken Lay or Jose Canseco (Mr. McCain has been a prominent crusader against steroids in baseball).

He views himself, I believe, as a kind of modern-day Robin Hood, a defender of the downtrodden and tormentor of the bullying special interests, which is endearing [Say what?] and unquestionably a big part of his broad political appeal, but often leads to populist and parasitic economic policy conclusions like higher taxes on the rich and attacks on "huge oil profits."

With Robin Hoods like that, who needs robber barons? Besides, "pumping massive amounts of liquidity into the economy and pumping up government spending by giving money away through rebates may create more problems than it helps to solve," as economist Brian Wesbury notes in "The Economy is Fine (Really)," an encouraging WSJ read:

The irony is almost too much to take. Yesterday everyone was worried about excessive consumer spending, a lack of saving, exploding debt levels, and federal budget deficits. Today, our government is doing just about everything in its power to help consumers borrow more at low rates, while it is running up the budget deficit to get people to spend more. This is the tyranny of the urgent in an election year, and it's the development that investors should really worry about. It reads just like the 1970s.

The good news is that the U.S. financial system is not as fragile as many pundits suggest. Nor is the economy showing anything other than normal signs of stress . . . Initial unemployment claims, a very consistent canary in the coal mine for recessions, are nowhere near a level of concern.

Because all debt rests on a foundation of real economic activity, and the real economy is still resilient, the current red alert about a crashing house of cards looks like another false alarm . . . Keep the faith and stay invested. It's a wonderful buying opportunity.

If Senator McCain doesn't have time for the economics expounded in the pages of the WSJ or in the writings of Thomas Sowell, how about a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down? "We can’t keep rapping the knuckles of the invisible hand," writes Scott Ott, the master satirist of ScrappleFace, turning the just-say-no party's cut-and-run stance on its head:

In his final State of the Union address tonight, President George Bush plans to announce that the U.S. economy has become such a quagmire that the federal government will begin a phased withdrawal . . .

“The people, and their businesses, will have to make it on their own,” the president will reportedly say. “If we keep bailing them out, they’re never going to learn to live with the consequences of their actions. Risk, reward and failure are the lifeblood of capitalism" . . . The federal government will stand down so American ingenuity, intiative and persistence can stand up.

In Ott's "reportage," the Democrats, on cue, "have already signaled opposition to the pull-out plan, advocating instead a surge of government involvement in business and in the finances of every citizen." Does the Republican [in name only?] senator really believe this stuff, or is it -- as we wrote a couple of years back in "McCain in the Balance" re his decision to jump on the human-caused global-warming bandwagon -- "just that he knows human weakness when he sees it and is all too willing to cynically prey upon it in his grab for the golden ring"?

Charge!

Update: You want human weakness? Hurry on over to Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities. You're soakin' in it.

If you're lucky, you pull it all together with a twist of your wit

[George Stubbs's] portrait from life of a tigress that had been given to George Spencer, the fourth Duke of Marlborough (and a great great great greatgreatgreatgreat uncle of Princess Diana) by Lord Clive, the governor of Bengal, may have been seen by a twelve-year-old WIlliam Blake and inspired his famous poem The Tyger," writes Amba in a perfect little masterpiece of a blogpost. Tiny, above, pauses to read the silence after snowfall yesterday morning.

"I think cheating is the way to go, too. There's definite fodder there for a worlds-within-worlds blog post," writes Amba in her own comments in response to an extended comment we left at Ambivablog this morning, taking up her invitation to readers to consider themselves tagged for "the Page 123 Book Meme." She herself had been tagged by The Anchoress. Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

We couldn't resist. Here's some of what we wrote in her comments, first re her post itself:

My favorite kind of blogpost, suggestive of worlds within worlds. One thing leads to another, and if you're lucky, you pull it all together with a twist of your wit. A perfect little masterpiece! All that, and cats, too [Be sure to go over and check it out].

I may take you up on your "open tag," although I'll probably have to cheat a little, since Merriam-Webster's Unabridged -- on the bookstand right behind where I sit at the computer -- has virtually no complete sentences on page 123. Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club -- on top of a pile of books including your own A Return to Innocence! across the room -- on the other hand, promises world without end.

Tiny in context -- a fuller crop of the above closeup -- is as the full page 123 of a book is to a selection of the three sentences following the fifth sentence on that page, object of the "Page 123 Book Meme" that is the subject of this post. Leaving more to the imagination, the closeup assumes a poetic dimension that encourages our mind to "'float away' and let another 'train of thought' carry it in some other direction," in Amba's words (see excerpt from A Return to Innocence below). Kind of like blogging itself, we commented to Amba. Take this trio from page 123 of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds's An Army of Davids and see what comes to mind: "Well, sort of. Everybody knows it. But they don't know it, yet, down deep where it counts."

"Maybe I could convince myself that since your book is at eye level -- the windows to the soul and all that -- it is truly the nearest to me. Hmmmm," we continued, proceeding to pluck out the three sentences following the fifth sentence on page 123 of Amba's book and several others in that pile on the other side of the room. From Amba's A Return to Innocence: Philosophical Guidance in An Age of Innocence:

"The ancient Buddhist texts explain that it keeps the mind steady, instead of letting it bob about like a pumpkin in water ['Reminds me of blogging] -- it is the opposite of superficial attention. So when your Bare Attention confronts the object you're examining, your mind doesn't 'float away' and let another 'train of thought' carry it in some other direction.

We were particularly intrigued with the three sentences following the fifth sentence on page 123 of The Metaphysical Club. The topic was evolution, "simply the incidental by-product of material struggle, not its goal":

It is a process without a mind. A way of thinking that regards individual differences as inessential departures from a general type is therefore not well suited for dealing with the natural world. A general type is fixed, determinate, and uniform; the world Darwin described is characterized by chance, change, and difference -- all the attributes general types are designed to leave out.

And Amba's response:

In the terms of my favorite psychologist James Hillmen, A Return to Innocence is too monolithically spiritual; blogging is soulful . . . Spirit is supercilious and monotheistic. It looks down on digressions and attempts to dismiss or purge them. The ground-clearing, defoliating absolutism of the "spiritual" perspective, manifested in radical Islam and more gently in Innocence (defoliate the weedy ground of your consciousness!), "regards individual differences as inessential departures from a general type is therefore not well suited for dealing with the natural world." Darwin is soulful.

Echoes of Christian charity?:

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

-- 1 Corinthians 13

As Jean Strouse wrote in a NYT review of The Metaphysical Club, "Evolutionary theory did away with the idea of a supernatural intelligence governing the universe (although not with the human yearning for some higher order)." It's the "wired for belief" thing.

Update: Carnival of the Cats #202 now open for business at Bad Kitty Cats Poohbox Clan Journal.

Over the Hillary

Walking the dog. This was from a diet website last week. We've lost the link, but the image speaks for itself. Update: Here's the link to Rock the Scales weight-loss program.

Obamaca, Obamaca, God shed his grace on thee . . .

We know, we know, he's 60's Marxist lite warmed over, but Anything But Hillary makes our heart sing. Not to mention a third-place finish* for the woman who would be King, according to Shep on FoxNews as we post:

Barack Obama routed Hillary Clinton.

How sweet it is.

Update: "With South Carolina victory in hand, Obama tries to avoid being pigeon-holed as "black candidate,'" headlines Fox next morning, even as JFKs daughter swoons in a NYT op ed:

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them," Caroline Kennedy wrote in an op-ed posted Saturday on the Web site of The New York Times. "But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president -- not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans" . . . And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.

Caroline Kennedy for Vice President!

*Final South Carolina primary results:  Obama 55%, Clinton 27%, Edwards 18%.

"Having no vase, she improvised"

"Watch the birdie," the pioneering portrait photographer's old standby to get the subject to look alert, works like a charm with Baby, whose focussed stare above is effortlessly induced by our dangling the camera's strap just off camera.

"If all we listen to are people who share our opinions, we end up living in an echo chamber: not healthy or well-informed, and lacking a stereoscopic view of the world around us," writes the wise and witty man of many hats -- not to mention many cats -- Ellison of Blog d'Elisson in the comments to "The point is to discover them," our recent post about radical leftists' attempt to silence Pope Benedict XVI last week.

"Hillary's assertion that her 'stimulus' package shouldn't be paid for denies reality," writes George Melloan in today's WSJ. "Somebody has to pay for it. One man's consumption must be paid for by his own or someone else's production." But don't try to confuse Miss Hillary! with the facts. She has made it clear that she knows better than the invisible hand what's good for us. Tiny, above, skirting a "Stop Hillary" poster from the Republican National Committee, has no use for politicians and their fellow travelers who would deny the economic logic of nature and human nature.

"BTW, that photo of Tiny is remarkable," continues ailurophile Elisson, effervescing "Those eyes sparkle with life."

"This photograph graces the wall of our downstairs half-bath," writes Elisson, whose wife took the picture in Amsterdam years ago. "Having no vase, she improvised . . . and the resulting image was irresistible." (Photo by SWMBO, 1987)

"And who but Sissy Willis can ennoble life's detritus, finding beauty in a Midden-Heap?" ponders the proudly self-appointed king of "self-aggrandizement and time-wastage": "Unexpected places, indeed."

Update: Modulator's Friday Ark now boarding.

Update II: Missy & KC host Carnival of the Cats #201.

"This is exceptional"

Sunset from the front porch this afta looking towards Charlestown with McArdle Bridge in the foreground, Mystic River Bridge approach in the middle ground and Bunker Hill monument beyond, stage left.

"Where the blue of the night Meets the gold of the day Someone waits for me." Sigh.

A faint whiff of romance -- the way to a man's heart and all that -- was in the air as Tuck tasted our latest Cold Turkey Cookbook offering, Pork Stir Fry, this evening and declared "Whipple. This is exceptional."

Pork Stir Fry with Corny Cornbread minimuffin stoked the fires of romance this evening.

Pork Stir Fry

Slice and dice one pork tenderloin, garlic, leeks and mushrooms. Cut off ends of sugar snap peas. Heat sesame oil in frying pan or wok and cook pork briefly till it loses the pink, grinding a little pepper over all to taste.

Remove pork from pan and set aside. Add a little more oil to the pan and cook the veggies till soft. Add 1/3 cup red vermouth and 1/3 cup soy sauce and continue cooking till liquid becomes syrupy.

Return pork to pan, reheat briefly and serve on a bed of perfect rice.

This IS exceptional.

"It should be required reading for all students planning a 'career' in journalism"

"Forget about Instapundit visitors. Have you read Mark Steyn's latest?" we emailed Iowahawk, who e'd back "Wow, didn't know that. Thanks kindly for the alert! A Fan, Dave." Who knew?

"It should be required reading for all students planning a 'career' in journalism," writes our imail correspondent re Iowahawk's totally -- TOTALLY -- awesome "Bylines of Brutality," picked up not only by the usual suspects, from the professor on down, but by Mark Steyn himself, who notes re the NYTs "new story" in the wake of declining deaths in the war zones: "Americans are being cut down by violent irrational soldiers we can never hope to understand." Iowahawk turns the NYTs politically correct lie on its head, as Mark Steyn explains:

Better yet, the blogger Iowahawk meticulously drew his own "patchwork picture" of another "quiet phenomenon": the Denver newspaper columnist arrested for stalking, the Cincinnati TV reporter facing child-molestation charges, the Philadelphia anchorwoman who went on a violent drunken rampage. As Iowahawk's one-man investigative unit wondered: "Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence that America's newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters?"

"It's probably too late, though," imails our correspondent:

They wouldn't get it. Humorlessness sets in early among that crowd. I love this one [Iowahawk], and Scrappleface, who are able to say what I am thinking.

The thing we hate most is the idea that women per se would glom onto Hillary because "the boys" are piling on, as National Review's Myrna Blyth reports:

So how the media treats a female candidate becomes a factor not only in shaping women’s opinions about the candidate, but also by determining how supportive of that candidate women will be when they arrive at the ballot box. The media may have helped Hillary when they were being positive about the inevitability of her campaign. But they may have helped her even more, at least with women voters, when they turned negative about her chances. A woman’s vulnerabilities, real or pretended, and how the media focuses on them, can become more important than her policies, especially at a time when media coverage has turned this election into a year-long 24/7 reality show. And the twists and turns of the soap opera narrative of Hillary -- she’s up, she’s down, she rises once again are a lot more compelling to the media -- and, let’s admit it, to female voters -- than Hillary’s own chilly, wonky personality.

They should have never given women the vote.

"The point is to discover them"

Tiny was not amused at being roused from her mid-morning nap for photo ops, but a couple of cannily tendered kitty treats soothed the savage breast.

"American universities aren't the only places where politically incorrect speakers are silenced nowadays," begins a WSJ editorial on the recent unpleasantness at Sapienza University of Rome -- "one of Europe's most prestigious universities" -- where radical leftist faculty and students tried to silence Pope Benedict XVI:

On Tuesday the pontiff canceled a speech scheduled for today at Sapienza University of Rome in the wake of a threat by students and 67 faculty members to disrupt his appearance. The scholars argued that it was inappropriate for a religious figure to speak at their university.

This pope's specific sin was a speech he gave nearly 20 years ago in which, they claimed, he indicated support for the 17th-century heresy trial against Galileo. The censoring scholars apparently failed to appreciate the irony that, in preventing the pope from speaking, they were doing to him what the Church once did to Galileo, stifling free speech and intellectual inquiry.

"The scientists’ revolt, initially discreet, snowballed after radical students," channeling Hillary mentor Saul Alinsky's third rule for radicals -- "you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat" -- "took up the cause. On Tuesday they briefly occupied the rector’s offices seeking the right to demonstrate on Thursday," reports AFP.

"The demand will far outstrip the available supply," said a Roman Catholic spokesman re tickets for Pope Benedict XVI's Mass at Yankee Stadium in April, reports Newsday. In photo the Holy Father holds his first general audience of 2008 in St.Peter's Basilica, the Vatican. (Getty Images)

How lame. But Alinsky's shopworn, totalitarianesque "Rules for Radicals" (published in 1971) were no match for the Pope who loves cats and Mozart. Papa Ratzi may have canceled, but he didn't back down. Catholic World News explains:

The Vatican Secretary of State said that the Pope decided to postpone his visit "in order to remove any pretext for demonstrations." The cardinal acknowledged that "a decidedly minority group of professors and students" had been responsible for the uproars that prompted the Pope's cancellation.

Cardinal Bertone's letter accompanied a text of the address that the Holy Father had planned to deliver at La Sapienza . . .

The Pope's lecture was read at the convocation that the Pontiff had been invited to address. [The full text of the papal address is available on the CWN site.] When Professor Piero Marletti concluded his reading of the papal text, the crowd in the university's Aula Magna rose in hearty applause, punctuated by cheers of "Long live the Pope!" . . .

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa remarked that the Pope’s decision to cancel his visit to La Sapienza was “common sense”. Cardinal Bagnasco assured readers that the Catholic Church has not renounced dialogue with the scientific world. Also, leaders of the youth wing of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia Party said they would attend Sunday’s Angelus as an expression of solidarity with the Pope.

Beauty in unexpected places, this time looking down into the kitchen compost collector, where orange peels, garlic parchment, cauliflower greens, snow pea tips and iceberg lettuce compose a richly sonorous quintet of organic form, texture and color.

"What can and should the Pope say in meeting with his city's university?" asked His Holiness in the speech he did not deliver. "He certainly should not try to impose in an authoritarian manner his faith on others, which can only be freely offered":

In modern times knowledge has become more multi-faceted, especially in the two broad fields that now prevail in universities. First of all, there are the natural sciences which have developed on the basis of experimentation and subject matters’ supposed rationality. Secondly, there are the social sciences and the humanities in which man has tried to understand himself by looking at his own history and uncovering his own nature . . .

But man’s journey can never be said to be over, and the danger of falling into inhumanity is never just warded off as we can see in today's history. The danger faced by the Western world, just to mention the latter, is that mankind, given its great knowledge and power, might give up on the question of the truth . . . philosophy, feeling incapable of fulfilling its task, might degenerate into positivism . . . If however reason, concerned about its supposed purity, fails to hear the great message that comes from the Christian faith and the understanding it brings, it will dry up like a tree with roots cut off from the water that gives it life. It will lose the courage needed to find the truth and thus become . . . undone and fragmented.

As we blogged three years back, referencing thoughts of the late Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin, "trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers."

Update:  Cut flowers not your thing? All things bright and beautiful now boarding Friday Ark #174 at Steve's Modulator.

Update II: "It’s not healthy," says The Anchoress.

Update III: The Lord moves in mysterious ways: "Galileo’s university considers inviting Pope to give conference."

Update IV: What comes to mind? Tell it to Dr. Sanity in the comments of her latest Carnival of the Insanities. If laughter is the best medicine, Siggy has the cure.

Note: Blog title is part of a quotation from Galileo: "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."

Where did the time go?

The view from the terrace yesterday afternoon in the aftermath of Monday's nor'easter. It started early morning as rain. Then the cold front moved in, and the rain turned to big, heavy, slushy flakes that stuck to the branches, followed by small, light, fluffy flakes that piled on, transforming the urban forest of Chelsea into a Winter Wonderland. Final accumulation a modest but respectable 4 to 5 inches that called for our shoveling the Kitty Play Yard and Tuck's trotting out his shiny new Xmas snow blower to do the driveway and sidewalk. The whole city was shoveling, and camaraderie was in the air.

Morning imail snapshots:

Gooomp: Coldest night of the winter expected tonight Sunday night . . . 10 degrees.

We: Brrrr.

Where did the time go? Just under 20 hours -- between 10:17 yesterday morning and 6:13 this morning -- have disappeared down the memory hole of our site meter stats. 'Hope that doesn't compromise our advertising rates.

Where is the love?

We: Something wrong with the site meter. It says I have had zero visits in the last hour, PLUS the hours between 10:17 yesterday morning and 6:13 this morning are missing!

Goomp: Hillary's fault.

We contacted the support folks at sitemeter, who emailed back:

Thanks for writing. We are having a problem with the services that handle your account. We are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Thanks for your patience and patronage.

Patience? Who, us? Still, we appreciate their prompt response. Checking again early afternoon, we notice all our gains since 6:13 this morning have been wiped out, and the site summary claims we've had zero visitors in the last hour and only 70 since midnight. We long for the days of our CrotchaLanche.

Update: Afternoon imail snapshot:

She: I share Goomp's theory, re your disappearing stats.

We: I added "What Britney's crotch did to my stats" in there to try to make up for the losses I've suffered so far, once sitemeter gets their act back together.

She: LOL. I saw the method. I was more concerned about tonight's Sunday night's being the coldest night of the year.

We: A two-cat night.

Meanwhile, back to our stats. Britney + spears is, indeed, this very day, still among Technorati's top ten "Tags from what’s rising today":

apple barack obama baseball blogging britney spears christmas google hillary

Bring on the meaningless visitations!

"Everything you need to know about the way Hillary Clinton will govern"

 

"Tim Russert would never question [Hillary Clinton] about her role in Somalia. But in her book For Love of Politics Sally Bedell Smith reports that it was Hillary who overrode Bill's concerns that his decision to withdraw all American troops within 6 months" following the deadly incidents depicted in the film "Black Hawk Down" (above), "would send the wrong message to US enemies," writes Judith Apter Klinghoffer, adding "It is disconcerting to realize that Hillary has learned nothing from the experience."

We let loose with an uncontrollable barrage of expletives that roused a sleeping Tuck -- who was not amused -- early morning as we heard Miss Hillary in "Meet the Press" reruns tell Tim Russert that any success we were having in Iraq was due primarily to her own cut-and-run rhetoric:

I know very well that they follow everything that I say. And my commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009 is a big factor, as it is with Senator Obama, Senator Edwards, those of us on the Democratic side. It is a big factor in pushing the Iraqi government to finally do what they should have been doing all along.

Russert had asked the "Smartest Woman on Earth" what she would say to General Petraeus, now that the surge is working, in light of her having attempted to humiliate and discredit him -- to his face! -- last fall by asserting that his progress report required "a willing suspension of disbelief." As Judith Apter Klinghoffer writes at the History News Network, "Everything you need to know about the way Hillary Clinton will govern" can be found in her response:

Tim, I'm going to go back to what the whole point of the surge was, and the testimony that we heard last fall. The point of the surge was to push the Iraqi government to make these tough choices. Now, if we put in 30,000 of our finest young men and women, who are going to go after the bad guys and quell violence in certain parts of Iraq, there's no doubt that can be done . . . The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us.

It was the ignorance and arrogance and hubris of her words -- especially the ones dismissing the hard-fought success of General Petraeus's groundbreaking counterinsurgency strategy as something that 30,000 troops could accomplish with ease -- that had precipitated our above-mentioned profanatory outburst. Klinghoffer's summary is crisp and to the point:

She takes credit for American success achieved despite her opposition and plans to wrangle defeat from the jaws of victory if elected president. Yes, Al Qaeda is watching, and she has just informed them that she had learned nothing from Somalia, where she insisted Bill withdraw precipitously [the weak-horse response that would embolden Osama] to force Somalis and the UN to take responsibility.

'Wonder whether Mrs. Clinton ever even read the General's September report which had caused her to roll her eyes in disbelief? For that matter, has she read his Counterinsurgency manual released in December of 2006? We know she didn't read the 90-page, classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before her 2002 vote to authorize war, as she explained with a straight face to Russert:

Well, actually, not very many people read the whole thing because we were getting constant briefings.

We suggest she get some remedial briefings on how "the experience in Iraq is transforming the miilitary into the force required to help with the Long War," as Marine Eric Swabb explictes in a WSJ Commentary:

The Iraq war is also dramatically improving the military's understanding, training and capabilities in irregular warfare . . .

The blunders of the early years are well-known. Trained for conventional warfare, the Army and Marine Corps were unprepared for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Commanders emphasized killing or capturing insurgents not securing the population as counterinsurgency doctrine emphasizes . . .

Pre-deployment training now includes realistic scenarios that test units' ability to build relationships with local leaders and partner with host-nation forces . . .

Commanders, from the small-unit level to the general ranks, increasingly understand that population security, political reconciliation and economic development create legitimate government, which saps insurgents' strength. As a result, conventional forces are now performing counterinsurgency missions at a level that many experts thought impossible.

The former First Lady's apparent "understanding" that the mission of the surge is to "go after the bad guys and quell violence" isn't even close.

The trumpet of a prophecy!

Babe inspects a low-lying branch of the privet, a feline version of the Drudge Report, filled with links to the latest news.

We stayed up for the debate and agree with pollster Frank Luntz's panel of everyday folk that Fred's the one. Some are saying it's "too little too late." They need to relax. Meanwhile, in imail news:

We: There should be another quickie ANIMAL post up by the time you reboot tomorrow morning. I have an awesome picture of Baby meeping outside. Trying to come up with some copy.

She: Can you send me the picture? I love making up copy.

We: It's in the mail!

She: He looks like the happiest cat on earth.

We: To me he looks very intense, reading the scent messages.

She: The warm weather must have brought out scents, yes. "Ah, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

We: That's it!

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,    
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

-- From Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Update: In spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love. Elisson in the comments:

Percy Bysshe
Would take a pysshe
In Lake Geneva's water.
Then, without fail,
Begin to nail
Good Mister Godwin's daughter.

Thanks, good lookin'.

Update: Heartbreaking news -- via Modulator's Friday Ark #173 -- from the Father of the Felinosphere, Laurence Simon, who has lost his precious Frisky, blogged here from time to time through the years. You can read more about Frisky, Edloe and Piper at blogHOUSTON.

"Frisky, AKA Mr. Fluffy, defends box in dramatic photo series," we captioned this image of one of Laurence Simon's lionized feline companions back in April of 2004.

A poignant and poetic tribute to Frisky from Blog d'Elisson:

The love humans feel for their Animal Buddies is fraught with the deep knowledge that our longer lifespans virtually guarantee painful farewells. It is the Way of the World.

Loving our two cats the way we do, we can barely force ourselves to imagine that they will not always be with us. And having met Frisky -- and the rest of the Simon menagerie -- I can personally attest to the deep affection Lair and Gina have for their cats . . . all of them.

Godspeed, Mr. Fluffy.