But, then again, she’s also good looking, well armed and in the IDF. Enjoy.

Words fail me – there is, perhaps, just too much going on with today’s soldiers for me to pause and give proper tribute to the past. With the continuing battle in Afghanistan and the losses at Ft. Hood, the symbolism of 11/11 seems a bit out of place.

I can only, for now, think of my father – who joined the Marines at 17 in World War Two. And my grandfather and all his brothers, who went to serve in France during World War One. I also have in my mind’s eye the place where my father is buried – among his like, at the veteran’s cemetery. Row upon row of simple, gray blocks recording the mundane of birth and death, rank and branch of service. But then I remember the Marine who knelt before me – before the likes of me! – and handed me the flag that had draped my father’s casket…where did I earn such honor?…only in the veterans, and only in so much as I honor them.

Interesting:

Word has been leaked by the Washington Post’s insidery The Fix that White House communications director Anita Dunn will be the first Obama senior staffer to “resign” at the end of this month. I guess they don’t count czars as senior staff, but no matter. What’s interesting in The Fix’s rather lengthy report is that there is no mention of the red elephant in the room – ‘Papa Mao Tse-Tung,” as we used to say in the sixties. No, The Fix’s Chris Cillizza dances around, seemingly linking Dunn’s downfall, if that’s what it is, to her leading the administration’s charge against Fox News (taking one for the team, I suppose). He doesn’t mention Dunn’s notorious remarks at a high school graduation, when she cited Mao and Mother Teresa as her mentors.

Of course there’s this, so who knows?

The passing of the baton from Dunn to Pfeiffer had long been expected within White House circles as she had made clear when she took the job that the “interim” in her title was meant to be taken literally.

Hard to tell if that’s real or spin or, more probably, both, but Cillizza’s report also contains this eye-opening tidbit:

Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff and former Illinois Congressman, has made clear he would like to return to elected office at some point in the not-too-distant future and, if past presidencies are any guide there will be some further turnover in the senior staff over the next year or so.

As Chief of Staff it is Emanuel’s job to make things run smoothly, engineer political victories and make the President look Presidential at all times. To put it mildly, Emanuel has been rather ineffective at this. The bad news is that it might be leftist anti-Semites who are pressing for Emanuel’s ouster – I’m figuring that Emanuel is the sole voice of reason on Israeli issues inside the White House and that simply has to be rubbing some people the wrong way.

Be that as it may, we’re starting to see all sorts of cracks in the Obama edifice – from Democrats steering clear of him to MSMers finally (albeit mildly) questioning his acts to leftists growing increasingly frustrated with Obama’s failure to deliver a United Socialist States of America.

Its just going to get worse from here on out – we’ve got the man who will redeem Carter in the White House; no longer will that dimwit from Plains hold the title of “worst President”.

This, I think, can now been seen as a consistent trend – the GOP is leading, thus far, in the overall 2010 contest:

Republican candidates have stretched their lead over Democrats to six points in the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. Republicans have held the lead for over four months now.

Voters not affiliated with either party continue to heavily favor Republicans, 43% to 20%.

its in those Independents where our 2009 victories came from, and the more Obama, Pelosi and Reid push left, the more those Independents will swing behind us.

I agree whole-heartedly and am glad I, too, never bought in.

Remember that, fellow Americans – no matter what you see or hear, everything is just peachy keen. So, please ignore this:

Gold futures – as well as spot metal – extended record highs shortly before futures floor trading opened in New York on Monday.

A markedly weaker U.S. dollar was mainly behind the surge.

In recent trading, December gold was up $11.70 at $1,107.40 an ounce after hitting a most-active record of $1,111.70. Nearby November gold hit $1,109.30, a front-month Comex record. Spot gold also hit a fresh all-time peak of $1,111.15 an ounce as the U.S. dollar weakened against the euro.

The continued record extensions are bolstering fund expectations that gold prices will keep rising, said George Gero, vice president with RBC Capital Markets Global Futures.

In addition to dollar woes, stronger equities futures and crude prices were helping gold, Gero said.

People are hiding their wealth – converting our rapidly devaluing currency in to gold and oil so that no matter what the government and banks screw up next, they’ll have something left. Of course, not all of us can do this – in fact, most of us can’t. We have to hold on to our ever more worthless dollars because we have to pay the day to day bills and don’t have a lot of surplus cash to shovel in to thousand-dollar-an-ounce gold or seventy-dollar-a-barrel oil.

As I’ve always said, pay very little attention to what people say – people with money are telling us that the economy is getting better…but what they are doing with the money (betting it on stocks, taking profits and converting the results in to commodities) is a much more powerful statement than all the glad-handing about “green shoots” and other references to Happy Days Are Here Again. We’ve got a dead economy, and all we’re waiting for is the burial.

Obama and his bankers hope to finesse things and figure that some how, some way, the wherewithal will be found to get Americans consuming again – thus allowing China to sustain its bubble and keep buying US bonds so we can finance our continued finessing of the economy. See the circle? Well, its a circle jerk. We, the people, are playing center.

Time for us to break out of this – to get past the idiots who brought us here and start laying our plans to build an economy based upon hard work, savings and real wealth. It’ll be a lot more boring – not quite as many X-Boxes under the Christmas tree – but once we do it, we’ll never have this problem again.

Ah, but China is a giant on spindly legs, just as Japan was in the 80’s. A quote from a related article over at Mish’s pretty much tells the tale:

All my young in-laws are rushing in to buy condos putting life savings down as well as laying down additional borrowed family cash down and then paying way more to buy each month than it would cost them to rent. It’s as if the boom crash in the west never happened and they believe themselves immune.

Indeed – the tip off, for me, was some tens of millions of dollars being paid for an apartment in Hong Kong. When people are being that stupid with money, a crash is inevitable. But the bankers are counting on it – especially those most heavily invested in China.

What astounds is that it is certain that no major entity is doing business in China without providing bribes and kickbacks to the elite. It is certain that China’s government is lying about economic and government spending statistics (China’s announced military budget, for instance, is a laughable lie). China is a corrupt, cruel government which makes its living by cheating its own people and ripping off western economies, especially ours. And here we go – and why? Because the money men still think they can get easy profits out of China. So does the Chinese government, which has essentially ordered this madness to happen. And easy profits are all they care about – because that is how you get the swell bonuses which buys the pretty toys which make you a better person than everyone else…

It will come crashing down – and the latest replacement for the United States will be shown to be the absurdity it always has been.

And he still won’t make it up for weeks:

President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month, administration and military officials have told McClatchy…

…The plan would fall well short of the 80,000 troops that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, suggested as a “low-risk option” that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.

It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a “high-risk” one that called for 20,000 additional troops and a “medium-risk” one that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.

The officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss internal administration planning, cautioned that Obama’s decision isn’t final, and won’t be until after administration officials discuss it with the NATO allies at a Nov. 23 meeting of the alliance’s North Atlantic Council and its Military Committee…

This has gone well beyond dithering – this has gone all the way up to vacillation; and there is no worse error a leader can make. To make any decision – even a bad decision – is better than making no decision at all. Obama seems deathly afraid of coming down on one side or another and the sense I get is that his aides are working it out amongst themselves and just trying to get something which will allow the issue to fade away, at least for a while.

The trouble is that real, flesh and blood American soldiers – as well as Afghans and allies – will have to pay a price for whatever decision Obama makes, or fails to make. People will die, no matter what Obama does – but upon Obama’s decision rides the answer to whether or not they’ll die in vain. We have a war which can be won and the troops are ready to win it – all they need is the word “go” from President Obama. What they might get is “maybe”.

Oh, for just an hour of President Bush back at the helm!

What are we to do about the creeping liberal-fascism in our country?

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God. – George Washington

Just that – and if we do it, then we’ll have done all we can.

Entirely unsurprising, and the very last wake up call we should need:

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.

Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday’s horrific shooting spree.

We have to find out about all of these Moslem entities and figure out who is producing jihadists and who isn’t. Those who are must be, as I’ve said, deported if foreign, and removed from any sensitive position, if American. We can’t afford to allow things to just drift – more innocent people will die, if we do.