sisu

Katzenjammer

Update: Elisson in the comments completes our weekend morning:

With shots of Tiny - oh, so sweet
My Weekend Morning is complete.

Update II: In case our readers were too polite to ask about that "stick" in front of Tiny's face in the top picture, it's the stem of a dried rose from the Christmas centerpiece that we had tossed to her, with camera in one hand and pitching the object with the other, hoping to catch the ever elusive decisive moment when she would rise up and grab it with both paws.

Update III: Grab the decisive moment with both paws at Modulator's Friday Ark #228.

Update IV: More decisive moments at Carnival of the Cats #255, hosted by Meowza of Mind of Mog.

Michael Steele leaps tall building in single bound

"RNC elects first African-American Chairman," reads the Fox News banner late afternoon. A great weight lifts. Our heart soars. We haven't felt this good about the Republican Party and the national debate since John McCain announced Sarah Palin for his running mate. We LOVE Michael Steele, a man of principle and first class all the way, a regular Fox News talking head who graciously outshines whichever lesser light representing the other side of the aisle happens to sit opposite him, always with perfect tact and good humor. Being down and out, licking one's wounds and looking inward is sometimes the best thing for getting back in touch with your inner conservative. Maybe the Republicans aren't the Stupid Party anymore?

Listen here for Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin's December 17 PJTV interview of the man of steel who's "trying to shake up the Republican Party as the next head of the NRC." Joe the Plumber's in there too.

"All too often the United States starts by dictating"

A lion cub can roar at a pope. "The beast was brought to the pontiff in the Vatican's Paul VI hall on Wednesday as part of a performance by members of the Medrano Circus … The lion's response: a roar, which drew laughter from the Vatican audience." (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano, HO) We happen to think the "roar may well be more of the pussycat's social yawn — or maybe akin to the feline hiss — but that's open to debate. No question, though, about Papa Ratzi's adoration of his feline "suppliCAT."

"And so what I told [envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell] is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating — in the past on some of these issues — and we don't always know all the factors that are involved," said the newly minted Leader of the Free World, displaying his slippery, disingenuous language of Arab-style diplomacy larded with BDS innuendo for all the world to see. "Dictating?" Can you say projection.? Pardon us as we gag.

Meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI noted that "While I renew with affection the expression of my full and unquestionable solidarity with our (Jewish) brothers, I hope the memory of the Shoah will induce humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of hate when it conquers the heart of man."

"An amused Benedict looked on as jugglers in sparkling costumes performed. He got up when the lion cub was carried closer so he could pat it."

In answer to a press question re "the significance of the President’s decision to give his first formal interview to an Arab network that Is part of a broader strategy for reaching out to the Muslim world":

[Robert Wood, acting State Dept spokesman]: Well, I think, clearly, if you see some of the initial reporting that’s come from the region, there’s been a really, really positive reception to the President’s interview. And I think it shows, based on what I’ve read so far in terms of the reaction from the region, that people are very, very pleased with the President’s approach and the fact that he really wants to engage seriously in a dialogue with the people of the Middle East, a two-way dialogue.

Egad. If only he really wanted to engage seriously in a "two-way dialogue" with the people on the other side of the aisle in Congress and such as ourselves. But he doesn't. His way or the highway. "I won."

"Much like a wild rose"*

A rose is a rose is a rose is a toy in Tinyworld. Above, a dried rose from the Christmas centerpiece hangs suspended in air just after our toss and before the sweet tiny girl rises up to catch it with both paws and go for the jugular. A hard moment to catch on "film" with our camera in one hand and pitching the ball rose with the other.

What's in a name? that which we call a Tiny
By any other name would smell as sweet.

The sweetest girl kitty ever.

Update: "I love this photo," writes Laura Lee in the comments. "In its mistiness it looks like Tiny has a guardian angel."

 

Her comments called to mind Bernini's "Ecstasy of St, Teresa" (above) in the Cappella Cornaro, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. (Web Gallery of Art photo)

*Blogpost title refers to Mark Overby's “Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.”

"Not a superficial gratitude given lightly"

"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Great Mass in C minor 'resounded through the elevating ambiance of the Sistine Chapel'" at a recent concert given by the "Regensburger Domspatzen" orchestra and choir in honor of Pope Benedict XVI's brother Msgr. Georg Ratzinger (left), maestro di cappella emeritus, apostolic protonotary, for the occasion of his 85th birthday. Screen grab from a Catholic news service H2O video report of the event.

"The thanksgiving to God expressed in the Mozart Mass [in C Minor, K.427] 'is not a superficial gratitude given lightly,' the pope said, but is wholehearted and reflects Mozart's 'interior struggle, his search for forgiveness, the mercy of God and, then, from these depths, his joy in God shines more brightly than ever,'" reports Catholic News Service [via Thoughts from an Oasis in French Catholicism], quoting from a recent Vatican Radio broadcast:

Speaking after the concert, Pope Benedict said that although he was a 14-year-old boy when he and his brother first heard the Mozart Mass performed, "I understood that we experienced something other than a simple concert, that it was music at prayer, the divine office, in which we almost could touch something of the magnificence and beauty of God himself, and we were touched" …

In the presence of the choir, orchestra and guests, the pope told his brother, "The 85 years of your life were not always easy."

The pope said his parents had lost all their savings in the 1930s, then a new economic crisis enveloped the world, then the Nazis came to power and World War II broke out.

But the brothers found "hope and joy" after the war as they returned to the seminary and were ordained to the priesthood together in 1951 …Pope Benedict said his brother discovered almost from the beginning the fact that God was calling him to exercise his priestly ministry while using his musical talents.

Tiny strikes a soulful pose atop the dining room table this morning, thinking, perhaps, of  her own brother, whose loss has left an empty place in our hearts.

"He loves cats, he plays Mozart on the piano before he goes to bed at night and the dictatorial relativist Left is apoplectic. Hallelujah!" we wrote in "The cats are invading the Holy See" back in April of 2005, one of the earliest of our Pope Blogging posts, now numbering over 75 and counting. A random excerpt from the first of those dozens that pops up in a google search for "sisu benedict," "Mugged by Pope Benedict XVI":

Take-home quotation [from the pope's White House South Lawn speech last April]:

Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience -- almost every town in this country has its monuments honouring those who sacrificed their lives in defence of freedom, both at home and abroad.

He quotes his predecessor:

In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in eastern Europe, [John Paul II] reminded us that history shows, time and again, that "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation," and a democracy without values can lose its very soul.

No wonder the great man has won our heart and soul. Listen to the Kyrie of the Great Mass here. Sing along with virtual sheet music here. Our own favorite version, featuring Kiri Te Kanawa and the Academy and Chorus of St. Martin in the Fields under the direction of Sir Neville Marriner CD available for purchase here. Fun fact: Sir Neville was conductor for the soundtrack of "Amadeus."

Update: Bird Dog hears the music.

Hot air has never been our thing

"If President Obama can launch a White House YouTube site, why can’t the pope?" asks Christian Science Monitor reporter Jimmy Orr rhetorically. And indeed Papa Ratzi's now got his own YouTube site, with more subscribers than the Leader of the Free World at last count. We've subscribed to both to keep tabs on our friends and foes. Obama caught in a classic Hot-Air Moment above in the latest video on his YouTube site.

"When he says 'we will restore science to its rightful place,' he isn't talking about Silicon Valley. He is talking about government grants to university researchers," writes Henry in the comments of Ann Althouse's post on Charles Krauthammer's column re why Obama's Inauguration speech was so tedious. [Full disclosure: From the moment he called us a racist back in December of 2006 in the disingenuously presented afterglow of Oprah's endorsement, we've been constitutionally — both physically and philosophically — unable to listen to the "soaring rhetoric" of the former President Elect. Hot air has never been our thing.]

"Benedict XVI: internet a new way to speak of God" headlines one of the top videos on Papa Ratzi's YouTube website.

Noisome folks on the left and right are shouting at each other over the scientific divide. It's the angry anti-science believers vs the angry anti-religion scientists. Both sides are into demonizing "the other." Yawn. Same old same old. Into that miasma, this voice of reason from commenter itellu3times at Little Green Footballs:

The left has built itself this fantasy that Bush hated and ignored science, based on the fact they did not fund a useless and ethically difficult subset of stem-cell research, and did not believe in global Algore.

Left-wing (pseudo-) scientists worldwide are getting all warm and teary about their upcoming unicorn grants.

Apropos of which, we emailed off a challenge this afternoon to John Brockman, "founder of the nonprofit Edge Foundation, Inc. and editor of Edge, the highly acclaimed website devoted to discussions of cutting edge science by many of the world's brilliant thinkers, the leaders of what he has termed 'the third culture'":

Thank you so very much for your thought-provoking publication, a great stimulator of lively discussion.

Re your forthcoming publication of "brief responses by selected contributors" addressing the question of "whether there is a philosophical incompatibility between religion and science," may I suggest that you consider asking the most brilliant mind out there who argues for their compatibility, Pope Benedict XVI? It seems to me that the loudest among the anti-religion scientist atheists protest too much, lacking the self-awareness to realize that their own fervor against faith is itself a kind of secular faith.

As I wrote a couple of years back, citing Oriana Fallaci's famous "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true," "It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for."

Herewith, a republication of our March 19, 2006 blogpost "It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for,"

Ball? What ball? Tiny on deck in the arc of Tuck's chipboard fabric-cutting board during early-morning ball play.

"I believe that the antagonism between reason and faith will only grow more pervasive and intractable in the coming years," writes Sam Harris, author of the New York Times bestseller, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, at The Huffington Post. According to the blurb at his book's web site, "Mr. Harris is now completing a doctorate in neuroscience, studying the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)." Right up our alley. He came to our attention this morning as the purveyor of an email from Muslim journalist Irshad Manji — blogged here and here — forwarded by our good blogfriend Annie of AmbivaBlog. [Click here to sign petition.] Googling revealed that not only does he blog at Huffington, but we ourselves have had occasion to quote him in one of our favorite Darwin-related posts, "There is a grandeur in this view of life."

Tiny and the superball (just off camera to the right) pose an ongoing challenge to the photographer's hungry eye. For every keeper, there are dozens of shots where she has just exited stage right or left when the shutter finally clicks. Note dark blue jabot, upper left, Tuck's first, brilliantly executed finished segment of the new living room swags and jabots.

While we share Sam Harris's view of science as the key to "our rational description of the universe," we disagreed then — as we do now — with his  dismissal of religion:

To win this war of ideas, scientists and other rational people will need to find new ways of talking about ethics and spiritual experience. The distinction between science and religion is not a matter of excluding our ethical intuitions and non-ordinary states of consciousness from our conversation about the world; it is a matter of our being rigorous about what is reasonable to conclude on their basis. We must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not require the abject embrace of the preposterous. We must learn to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity — birth, marriage, death, etc. — without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality.

Between frenzied moments of batting and pouncing, Tiny retreats to a corner of the room to regroup.

Mr. Harris is understandably troubled that "irreconcilable religious commitments still inspire an appalling amount of human conflict," but it isn't religion per se but human nature itself that's the problem/challenge in our view. As we blogged here — citing anthropologist-turned-psychologist Pascal Boyer's brain-scan studies addressing the question "Why has belief proved so resilient as scientific progress unravels the mysteries of plagues, floods, earthquakes and our understanding of the universe?" — that's just the way we are after the great winnowing process of evolution:

By injecting nuns with radioactive chemicals, by scanning the brains of people with epilepsy and studying naughty children, scientists are now working out why. When the evidence is pieced together, it seems that evolution prepared what society later moulded: a brain to believe.

As well as providing succour for those troubled by the existential dilemma, religion, or at least a primitive spirituality, would have played another important role as human societies developed. By providing contexts for a moral code, religious beliefs encouraged bonding within groups, which in turn bolstered the group's chances of survival, says Boyer.

The early-morning light illuminates a cat's-eye view of the dining room as playing field, where the props of Tuck's sewing project lend interest and mystery.

Bonding within groups — the importance of being noticed — is one of the ur-themes of this blog (check out Neo's latest, "Dueling: defending one's honor" for a great take on the topic). Still, we couldn't agree more with Sam Harris when he writes "While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities":

Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive. It has also obliged us to lie to ourselves -- repeatedly and at the highest levels -- about the compatibility between religious faith and scientific rationality.

All that jazz. We love the liquid counterpoint of cat's paw and table paw and whiskers and superball and early-morning light as Tiny trips the light fantastic.

Does he realize his argument about ideas that are "patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive" applies equally to Islamist bile and the politically correct pronouncements of our fellow citizens of the left? It's not faith vs. rationality, but intolerance vs. tolerance. Render unto Caesar, as we've blogged before. It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for. The shining city upon a hill shimmers in our mind's eye. As Oriana Fallaci wrote — and we are forever quoting — "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true." We were touched by the poignant naiveté of Sam Harris's unself-aware statement of his own brand of secular faith:

When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths. Only then will the practice of raising our children to believe that they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu be broadly recognized as the ludicrous obscenity that it is. And only then will we stand a chance of healing the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world.

There must be something true. Try human nature. As Kerry of The Smoothing Plane asks in the comments re Mr. Harris's desire to "find reliable ways to make human beings more loving," "Make them …? We who?"

Time photog: A cult of personality grew up around GW Bush post 9/11

"As a photographer I looked for moments when Bush was alone," says Time photographer Christopher Morris in a superbly moving and insightful photo essay, "Photographing the President," musing "There was always something about him alone that was very evocative of him as a historical figure. There was a sense always that Bush was a man of determination and resolve who would go it alone, regardless of the consequences." (Images are from the Time video)

"The success of Mr. Bush's surge made it possible for President Obama to warn terrorists on Tuesday 'you cannot outlast us,'" writes Karl Rove in a rousing tribute to his former boss, speaking fondly of "the thoughtfulness and grace so characteristic of this wonderful American family" even as he mounts a vigorous defense of the Bush legacy. "It’s nice that he’s loyal, but for now all he can do is preach to the choir," notes The Anchoress, who rightly points out that "The haters don’t want to hear it and won’t be convinced. Not for decades, if ever." But for us choir members, Rove's words are music to our ears:

A video tribute [viewed by family and friends on the plane ride home to Texas Tuesday] produced warm laughter and inevitable tears. There was no bitterness, but rather a sense of gratitude — gratitude for the opportunity to serve, for able and loyal colleagues, and above all for our country and its people.

Yet, as Mr. Bush left Washington, in a last angry frenzy his critics again distorted his record, maligned his character and repeated untruths about his years in the Oval Office. Nothing they wrote or said changes the essential facts.

To start with, Mr. Bush was right about Iraq. The world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power. And the former president was right to change strategy and surge more U.S. troops.

"A legion of critics (including President Barack Obama) claimed it couldn't work," continues Rove:

They were wrong. Iraq is now on the mend, the war is on the path to victory, al Qaeda has been dealt a humiliating defeat, and a democracy in the heart of the Arab world is emerging.

"For me he was a fantastic subject. He was controversial, he was animated, he was loved, he was hated, misunderstood, and most of all he was our president," says photographer Brooks Kraft in that Time photo essay referenced above, making a provocative point that perhaps anticipated the excesses of Obamania. "September 11 happened, and … we traveled across the whole country, and I saw the whole cult of personality that was building up around George W. Bush, and it's something that I had seen in other countries, this kind of nationalism and patriotism, and it was initially quite shocking for me to see it in America."

We're intrigued with Time presidential photographer Brooks Kraft's field observations (see caption above) of a "whole cult of personality that was building up around George W. Bush" in the wake of 9/11. We hadn't thought about it that way, having been, after all, a card-carrying member of said cult ourselves at the time.

"Bush's emotions would emerge spontaneously at times," says Time photographer Christopher Morris. Images like this one of "Mission Accomplished" flyboy GW shaking hands with members of the deck crew following his dashing tailhook landing aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln May 1, 2003, thrilled Bush fans like us and sent Bush haters into paroxysms of Bush Derangement Syndrome months before Charles Krauthammer identified the disorder.

We remember being ravished by Dubya's later much-maligned "Mission Accomplished" photo op (above) aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln back in May of 2003. Was our infatuation of a kind with the swooning behavior of the Obamaniacs today? Probably distant points on a spectrum, but with an important difference. Beyond the dashing image of conquering hero, we knew in our heart and in our mind, from his fearless, sometimes controversial leadership following 9/11 that George W. Bush was, in Rove's words, "a person of integrity who did what he believed was right." Despite wall-to-wall multi-media coverage these last two years and counting, the jury is still out on Barack Obama. Spengler [via Miss Kelly] gets the gist just right:

I have never met the man, but I have interviewed a fair sampling of his supporters, and conclude that Obama learned the power to cloud men's minds, like the Shadow on the old radio show. Apart from ambition, there is no "there" there. There are as many Obamas as there are interlocutors. He is a hollow man, I concluded, a Third World anthropologist studying us with engaged curiosity but complete emotional detachment. In this respect he is unpredictable.

Mission yet to be accomplished

Update: Miss Kelly links.

"Such, too, is pure leadership"

Following the transfer of power to the new guy just after noon, the Bushes "slipped the surly bonds of Earth" and headed back to Midland, Texas aboard Air Force One. Screenshot of GW and Laura Bush waving goodbye.

"We are ready to lead once more," asserted soaring rhetoritician and newly-minted President Barack Obama during his inaugural speech midday. What's this bit about leading "once more"? We guess whatever President Bush has been up to these last eight years doesn't measure up to Obama's definition of leadership. As we wrote in comments at the Journal's transcription of the speech:

A brilliant speech corrupted with subtle digs at President Bush throughout … He’s setting himself up to take credit for the coming fruits of Bush’s labors.

"Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions," he continued, implying that Bush was all shock and awe and somehow deficient in the "alliances-and-enduring-convictions" department:

They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

Has anyone shown greater humility and restraint than President George W. Bush in dealing with the relentless trashing of his every move? Oh, never mind. A few more excerpts of President Obama's speech, with our comments in brackets, and then on to some further thoughts about leadership:

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more [arrgggh!], we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort — even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin [Try "have already begun"] to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet [Don't ask]. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you [Not bad. Not bad at all].

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return [Again, arrgggh!] to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task [Again, not bad. Not bad at all. But that's where George Bush has been at from Day One, President Obama, sir].

Sigh. Go read Laura Lee's soulful and touching tribute to POTUS 43 and weep.:

I’ve often wondered if I were the only one who could see the spiritual side of the fight that President Bush has had to endure in his sacrificial presidency to protect and defend our nation but no, there are some who do. Taking a step back from politics is helpful for one to see the other aspects of the job of a commander in chief.

Paul Kengor in the American Thinker writes of the sacrificial Presidency of President Bush and compares it to Aslan at the Stone Table in the movie "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

"Not only did Bush's self-ascribed enemies frequently turn themselves into ogres, but they joyously ripped into the man while he quietly accepted it all," writes Kengor in his must-read essay. It's the scapegoat thing we wrote about the other day. Kengor on leadership:

… a stoic, turn-the-other-cheek, faith-based, upward-looking response, as they twitched and plunged into him. It enraged the rabble all the more when he never moved, sticking unshakably to his mission, resigned to his fate, seeming a little sad, but neither angry nor afraid — nor deterred. His faithfulness, more than anything else, set them seething, especially the secular among them. I know he acutely identifies with Christ's passion. He understands that one who stays true to principle, who tries to do right, and who stumbles on the way to his destination, sometimes cannot earn his rewards until his earthly life is finished.

Such, too, is pure leadership. Americans, whether they realize it or not, have just witnessed eight years of remarkable presidential leadership, especially compared to the poll-driven president who preceded Bush. Sure, there's much George W. Bush should have done better. As someone who has studied Ronald Reagan, I wish Bush had a sliver of Reagan's communication skills to win hearts and minds, to shape public perception. I wish he had better people working for him on Iraq in the bad years. Still, this was leadership.

"It's hard to argue that during the Bush presidency many difficult decisions were put off," Fox News anchor Bret Baier is commmenting to Britt Hume, referring to what may qualify as the first among equals among Obama's relentless run of disingenuous disses directed at his predecessor:

But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

The new prez is playing to his audience, of course, but it didn't sound presidential. Class will out, and the Bushes have it in spades. Bret Baier got it just right: "The president seems to be at peace with himself."

Update: How could we have forgotten this gem, another contender for top disinenuous diss, where President Obama is apparently channeling FDR:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

He's right. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. That, and maybe a few suicidal religionists looking to blow themselves up in our back yard.

Update II: The Anchoress gifts us with an exhaustive linked list of blog reactions to the speech, including our own.

Barack Obama is Sister Sharon Falconer

Sister Sarah R Brother Barack. Screenshot above of Jean Simmons as Sarah Falconer saving a soul in "Elmer Gantry," the timeless 1960 film, in Wikipedia's take "about a con man and a female evangelist selling religion to small town America." But isn't that exactly what Barack Obama & Company have been up to these last two years?

"Elmer Gantry," one of the nation's primal stories — a totally awesome cautionary tale given full hot-blooded life in the movie [that's what we used to call films back in the day] starring a larger-than-life Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons, that we happen to be watching this very minute for the umpteenth time — the flip side of the Founding Fathers' vision of fiercely independent, educated thinkers charting their own course. A Hollywood version of our country's prototypal Great Awakenings where the con man/woman suckers the unwashed, now being ushered into the 21st century via the latest technology with Baracko Bama as Simmons's charismatic character, Sister Sharon Falconer. It's killing us, but we're trying to learn to love it 'cause it's part and parcel of the nation's heart and soul. Utopian dreams are ever ready to capture the imagination of our weaker willed, more suggestible fellow citizens whenever the nation dozes off.

If this historic inauguration of our first mixed-race president has anything to do with racism, Obama himself set the tone way back in December of 2006 when he implied we were racist if we weren't buying what he was selling. But the worst for us, beyond his presumably left-leaning, big-government politics, is the cynical disingenuousness of the fundraising line the imminent Leader of the Free World has been feeding us little people. As we quoted his email in a previous post, "Just like we did on the campaign, we're relying entirely on supporters like you — ordinary people giving whatever they can afford to make this an event for all Americans." 'Wonder how many of the grassroots types are picking up on ABC News's latest horror story:

President-elect Barack Obama billed his inauguration an event "for all Americans." But in the nation's capital this long weekend, wealthy visitors are finding themselves a bit more equal -- and warmer -- than others.

Most Americans here to see President-elect Obama make history crammed onto buses and trains, slept on floors and fought crowds and cold. But the wealthiest Americans coming to see the event are enjoying all the perks their money and power ever warranted.

Want access? Want influence? George Soros and four family members gave a quarter of a million for the inaugural alone. It seems unseemly to us.

Update: Maggie's puts in a good word.

The only boy

Hearts still breaking. Still listening for his chirp, anticipating his stare in the countdown to supper. He haunts our dreams.