Blogs For Victory

A bit of poetry:

SONNET #12

by: William Shakespeare

WHEN I do count the clock that tells the time

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,

When I behold the violet past prime

And sable curls all silvered o’er with white,

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

Then of thy beauty do I question make

That thou among the wastes of time must go,

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defense

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence

A joke:

I object to all this sex on the television. I mean I keep falling off.

And a wish:

In the New Year, may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, never in want.

Governor Blagojevich – indicted, but not convicted and under American usage innocent until proven guilty – has made his selection to fill President-Elect Obama’s seat. Roland Burris, from what I can quickly gather about him, seems a rather uninteresting, Democratic political wheel horse. Probably a decent man and certainly someone who can at least represent Illinois in the Senate in rough accord with the expressed will of the Illinois electorate. But Blagojevich is toxic to Democrats – you see, he risks Democrats in power…there’s a chance a GOPer might even win the Illinois governorship and Obama’s Senate seat in 2010, and that is something which cannot be tolerated. And so, Senate Majority Leader Reid has come out against seating Blagojevich’s choice:

In what is shaping up to be an unprecedented political row, disgraced Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois has named former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.

The problem is that the chances of Mr. Burris — a well respected, squeaky clean, more than qualified African-American — ever taking his seat in the Senate chamber are not very good. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released a statement regarding the Burris appointment where he flatly rejects the idea of seating anyone chosen by the current Illinois governor, who is accused of trying to sell the Senate seat to the highest bidder:

It is truly regrettable that despite requests from all 50 Democratic Senators and public officials throughout Illinois, Gov. Blagojevich would take the imprudent step of appointing someone to the United States Senate who would serve under a shadow and be plagued by questions of impropriety. We say this without prejudice toward Roland Burris’s ability, and we respect his years of public service. But this is not about Mr. Burris; it is about the integrity of a governor accused of attempting to sell this United States Senate seat. Under these circumstances, anyone appointed by Gov. Blagojevich cannot be an effective representative of the people of Illinois and, as we have said, will not be seated by the Democratic Caucus.

The statement also called on Blagojevich to “put the interests of the people of Illinois and all Americans first by stepping aside now and letting his successor appoint someone who we will seat.” The statement was endorsed by Illinois’ senior senator, Dick Durbin, who has been calling for a special election to fill the vacancy — something many local Democrats wish to avoid due to the possibility that a Republican might win.

The Constitution gives each house of the Legislature the sole right to determine whom shall be seated – so, Reid can do what he says he’ll do and it’ll be perfectly legal…but should Reid do it?

On one hand, Reid gets to play the outraged tribune of the people – that he’s also the guy who gets lobbied by his own children for government money and that he’s had some rather shady land deals out here in Nevada doesn’t seem to impinge upon Reid’s calculations here. On the other hand, all this blow up over Blago’s choice does is bring the Blago issue – and the larger issue of Democrat corruption – back to front and center, not something Democrats need a mere 21 days before The One takes office.

Burris is also a barrier-breaking African-American – the first, I understand, to hold State-wide office in Illinois and, also, the desired (by racial bean counters) black man to replace a black man in the Senate. Is Burris going to be out for good, now? What will happen if the putative next governor appoints a white man to replace Obama? Burris is going to have his ardent defenders in the African-American community, and justly so as he seems a good man…Democrats have brewed this toxic mix of race-baiting and racial quotas and now they are completely hoist upon their own petard: to go after Blago’s choice, now, means going after a black man. It won’t be long before someone says that Reid is motivated by a desire to keep an authentic black leader out of the Senate (and you know how those Mormons had a history of discriminating against blacks back there in the past, right?)…

Then there is now the new fight – Blago has made it not just about him and his indictment, but about carrying out the job he was elected to do and working for the best interests of the people of Illinois, while everyone else on the Democrat side is only worrying about electoral politics. Blago can now cast himself as the selfless warrior of the people, brought low by They who want to keep the people down. This is nonsense, of course, but there will be liberals to buy such a line of thinking – we’ve seen just this past November how entirely gullible liberals are for a good fairy tale.

A nasty bit of politics here – and a lot of fun for a GOPer to watch…especially a GOPer who saw the Democrats’ way out of it a while ago and watched as they blew their chance to bury this dead cat quickly.

Miracles do happen, and lets pray we get one:

To President-elect Obama

As your inauguration day approaches, my heart is burdened with grief at the thought of all that you may do, and all that may happen for years to come as a result. Will anyone be able to change your mind? I hope so, for untold lives depend on it. I am convinced that only God will be able to change your heart, so that is how I, and all those who believe as I do, must direct our prayers. Life is sacred, Mr. Obama. Yours, mine, and our neighbor’s…I mean that tiny, developing life concealed in the womb. Concealed to us, always seen and known to God.

My mind goes back to your passionate speech at a Planned Parenthood event in 2007, and how eloquently you talked about the dreams you have for your daughters and for all the girls of the U.S., stressing that our nation must protect their “rights” and ensure that we don’t go backward to a time when women didn’t have those “rights.” I kept thinking, “Senator, if you have your way, this nation’s daughters won’t have the chance to be born!” That fundamental and genuine right will be taken from them before they ever see daylight.

All this concern for women’s rights seems hollow. It strikes me as profoundly hypocritical that women march and scream and protest and demand this “right” to kill their unborn babies, conveniently forgetting that that baby may be a girl…a daughter…a woman in the making! What about her rights? Is there no equality for women among women?

And I’m not at all diminishing the rights of unborn boys…the future husbands and fathers of our families. They are not expendable any more than our girls are. They deserve to be born. Indeed, we need them to be born…

This is written by Mrs. Jennifer Hartline, a lady who sees things clearly, and approaches issues with great passion. What a lot of people in the so-called “pro-choice” movement fail to realize is that our hearts are starting to wring with pity for them. It is ever so much more clear that the unborn human is, indeed, human that to maintain the pro-choice position requires an ever more stern determination to deny reality and close the heart – the human heart, made by God to receive and give love! – off to the pleas of the unborn.

We are such a selfish people – we demand the right to do whatever we please and then demand the right to have the result of our idiocy taken care of for us…and then we make it doubly horrific by insisting that everyone applaud not just our idiocy, but the obscenity covering up the idiocy! There is never a thought in those who scream about keeping hands off their wombs that there is a very simple expedient to ensure that absolutely no one has anything to do with a person’s womb – don’t have sex, problem solved. But, no – we demand the right to have sex without consequences, even though this is impossible…because we’re a bunch of petulant children; the spoiled brats of a civilization we don’t understand and won’t defend.

We must stop this nonsense – and the best place to start is with abortion. End it. It is simply bizarre to think that we figure that killing a child is the proper response to our irresponsibility. Abortion is a Final Solution to a temporary condition, and if we value our humanity and wish to be known by future generations as other than beasts in human skin, we must stop this terrible crime. And wouldn’t it be that much more wonderful if, in response to the payers of millions, Barack Obama awoke one morning, looked at his daughters, and realized that the gift he has been given is the most precious a person can obtain in this world?

With our money? Peter Kirsanow over at NRO’s The Corner:

Abbott: The economy’s a wreck. People have a lot less money now then they did three months ago.

Costello: No problem. The federal government’s going to spend $1 trillion to put more money in our pockets.

Abbott: But the government doesn’t have any money either. The federal deficit’s already around $1 trillion. And the federal debt’s around $11 trillion.

Costello: No problem. The government will use tax money.

Abbott: But that’s our money in the first place. And we don’t have any more money.

Costello: No problem. Then the government will just borrow the money.

Abbott: But the people who usually loan the money don’t have any more money either.

Costello: No problem. The government will just print all the money we need.

Abbott: But that will make the money worthless.

Costello: Yeah, but at least people will have money in their pockets.

Abbott: But they won’t be able to buy anything with it.

Costello: No problem. We’ll just blame it on Bush.

Abbott: Sounds like a plan.

And that, my friends, is how politics is done in America in 2008.

Read it and weep, liberals:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was a strong second among the most-admired women, behind Hillary Clinton but ahead of television host Oprah Winfrey, when the USA Today/Gallup poll was conducted Dec. 12-14.

You can say she’s hated, but its really just you wallowing in your own bitterness. She’s a popular woman and has a great political career in front of her, if she decides to take it – after all, she’s not like a liberal who must have office or feel reduced as a human being. She can stay in Alaska and be a grandma and have a wonderful life with no regrets – or she can come roaring out of that State in to 2012/2016 and wallop you liberals but good. Her choice – and either one is all good, as far as I’m concerned.

Michael Ledeen correctly notes that the battle in Gaza is not a thing in and of itself, but part of the Global War on Terrorism (or, if you prefer, the war against Islamo-fascism):

It was only a matter of time before Israel lashed out at Hamas in Gaza. Even the appeasers in Israel, of whom there are many, could not indefinitely accept thousands of rockets landing in civilian centers, especially after the battle against Hezbollah in 2006, which was widely viewed as a fiasco for the Israeli Army and for the leaders in Jerusalem who are facing an election in two months. Defense Minister Barak says it’s “all-out war,” which suggests ground operations. The usual rule in these cases is that Israel doesn’t have much time to accomplish its objectives; the “international community” rallies to the side of Israel’s enemies, and Israel’s leaders invariably convince themselves that if they play ball, they’ll be rewarded for it. But that never happens. So far the Brits and the Vatican have already demanded an end to operations against Hamas, and by the time I finish typing this there will be more.

Israeli leaders say they want to bring an end to the rocket and missile attacks from Gaza. But, as opposition leader Netanyahu said, that can’t be done without regime change.

Our goal should be twofold – stopping the attacks on our cities and eliminating the threat of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip…Stopping the attacks can be done within a short period of time, while eliminating the threat of rocket attacks from Gaza will entail toppling the Hamas rule over the Strip and uprooting the Iranian base there.

The last five words are key, because, as others have said, this is one more battle in the terror war in which we have been engaged since 2001. The Battle of Gaza cannot be understood as a thing in itself, but only as part of a broader whole: the war against the terror masters. And Iran is the most lethal, the most dangerous, and the most aggressive terror master in the world today.

I will take a moment to take exception to Ledeen’s characterization of the Vatican statement – clearly the Holy Father wants the violence to end, but he’s not just saying he wants the Israeli violence to end: all of it has to end, and the world should work diligently to assist the Israelis and Palestinians find a way out of this blind alley of hatred. With such sentiments I am in complete accord, as I think all right thinking people are – including Ledeen, a brilliant man but one some times given, understandably, to hyperbole when discussing the issues of terrorism and the threat of Islamism.

That aside, we cannot take the events in Gaza in isolation but must relate them to the whole picture – and in this picture, Iran looms exceptionally large. To just fight in Gaza or to just make a truce in Gaza won’t solve the issue. Fighting to a finish in Gaza will be more useful than making a truce in Gaza (at this point), but even a completely crushed Hamas in Gaza won’t resolve the issue as long as the Islamists have any place in the world where they can gather and plot and train unmolested. Ultimately, to Iran we must address ourselves.

In this, our largest problem will be when we have President Barack Obama – he doesn’t seem to have a clue about this, though one hopes that he’ll pay close attention to his Chief of Staff in middle eastern matters (one doesn’t really see Obama listening carefully to whatever Hillary believes about the area). If Israel pounds Hamas into submission in Gaza and, indeed, if Israel then goes on to temporarily cripple Iran’s nuclear program for a decade all we will have gained is time – time to work out a plan to overthrow the mullahs (who are terribly unpopular), or time to allow the mullahs to rebuild their terrorist infrastructure in order to attack again. It will be up to Obama to decide how this time is used – up to Obama, that is, to either figure out what a war is, or flub the issue horribly and to an ultimate high cost in blood.

Sorry, boys and girls, just don’t have a blog post in me right now for the AM. Have at it. But here’s a poem, if you need enlightenment and entertainment:

A Song of Defeat

The line breaks and the guns go under,

The lords and the lackeys ride the plain;

I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder,

And the whole of my heart grows young again.

For our chiefs said ‘Done,’ and I did not deem it;

Our seers said ‘Peace,’ and it was not peace;

Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,

And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.

But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle,

As once in my life they throbbed and reeled;

I have found my youth in the lost battle,

I have found my heart on the battlefield.

For we that fight till the world is free,

We are not easy in victory:

We have known each other too long, my brother,

And fought each other, the world and we.

And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,

And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint,

When we were angry and poor and happy,

And proud of seeing our names in print.

For so they conquered and so we scattered,

When the Devil road and his dogs smelt gold,

And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered;

When I was twenty and odd years old.

When the mongrel men that the market classes

Had slimy hands upon England’s rod,

And sword in hand upon Afric’s passes

Her last Republic cried to God.

For the men no lords can buy or sell,

They sit not easy when all goes well,

They have said to each other what naught can smother,

They have seen each other, our souls and hell.

It is all as of old, the empty clangour,

The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page,

The huckster who, mocking holy anger,

Painfully paints his face with rage.

And the faith of the poor is faint and partial,

And the pride of the rich is all for sale,

And the chosen heralds of England’s Marshal

Are the sandwich-men of the Daily Mail,

And the niggards that dare not give are glutted,

And the feeble that dare not fail are strong,

So while the City of Toil is gutted,

I sit in the saddle and sing my song.

For we that fight till the world is free,

We have no comfort in victory;

We have read each other as Cain his brother,

We know each other, these slaves and we.

GK Chesterton

Drip, drip, drip comes out the thick, nauseating syrup of corruption that is Chicago politics…from Legal Insurrection:

The media is all atwitter over the decision of the Illinois House committee considering articles of impeachment against Gov. Rod Blagojevich to deny the request by Blagojevich’s attorneys to subpoena Obama aides Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett. The House decision comes at the request of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is concerned that the subpoenas may interfere in the criminal case against Blagojevich.

The media has it both right and wrong. Right, the House apparently made the decision not to issue subpoenas. Wrong, that Emanuel and Jarrett won’t have to testify at some point. The media is failing to draw the distinction between the House proceedings drafting articles of impeachment, and the actual trial.

The legislative process to draft articles of impeachment is under the complete control of the House Democratic majority, which among other things, has denied both Blagojevich and House Republicans the right to issue subpoenas. The legislative process is purely political, and the politics of the Democratic majority and Fitzgerald are perfectly aligned for now. Once the articles of impeachment are passed, however, the political process and Fitzgerald lose some measure of control.

Article IV, Section 14 of the Illinois Constitution provides that once the House has impeached the Governor, “[i]mpeachments shall be tried by the Senate. When sitting for that purpose, Senators shall be upon oath, or affirmation, to do justice according to law. If the Governor is tried, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shall preside. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senators elected.”

The key provisions are the requirement that the Senators do justice “according to law,” and that the Chief Justice “shall preside.” While there will be plenty of legal arguments over what this means, it is clear that these provisions impose a higher level of due process than the purely legislative House proceedings, which are not limited by such provisions.

At trial, we can expect Blagojevich to renew his request to call any and all witnesses necessary for his defense, and to invoke standards of relevance similar to what prevails in court. Unless the articles of impeachment are so narrowly drawn as to exclude any use of any information in the Criminal Complaint (or anticipated Indictment), it is likely that the testimony of Emanuel and Jarrett will be relevant to the issue, among others, of Blagojevich’s alleged attempt to sell Obama’s open U.S. Senate seat.

One does begin to wonder if Fitzgerald has blown his case – at this point, Blago is just entirely indifferent to what people think about him, or he’s seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. The trouble for Obama is that the light might be rather far down the tunnel and so this problem might continue on for months. Obama has a lot on his plate and he needs to have his senior aides called to testify in a seedy political corruption case like he needs a hole in his head. Trouble is, how does Obama get out of this and bury the whole problem?

He will become Fitzgerald’s boss on January 20th – and he can order Fitz to call off the dogs, fire Fitz or (worst case scenario) confirm to Fitz that his job is secure due to his mishandling of the Blago case which resulted in Blago not actually being sent to jail where he might be induced to spill all the beans about Chicago corruption. Doing the first would be fatal to Obama’s image as an agent of change. Ditto with the second alternative. If its the third, then its just a matter of time before it all comes out with the result that Blago becomes Obama’s Whitewater. There is a fourth alternative – Obama can come completely clean in this, but that is only possible if Obama and his senior aides really did nothing wrong (if Obama and aides are clean, is there still a chance that they’d refuse to clear the air – yes, because even a clean Democrat worries that a full airing of a case will just open up a can of worms).

We’ve got an economy on the fritz, a campaign to win in Afghanistan, a Russia getting out of control, a Venezuela which needs to be curbed, a China on the verge of an economic collapse, a new flare up in the Israeli-Arab War…in to this toxic mix we don’t need to add a corruption scandal. Too bad, then, that we elected a product of the hopelessly corrupt Chicago Democratic machine – Obama might be clean, but all those around him are deep in the Chicago muck.

In how life in America is reported starting on January 20th, as noted by Victor Davis Hanson:

By July, we will come to feel that 2009 will be one of the most upbeat years in our history, as what used to be the news media∗ begins to get behind America and report on all the mysteriously wonderful things that are suddenly taking place.

All the campaign talk of the Great Depression, a Vietnam-like war, and our shredded Constitution will now thankfully subside as the Obama administration assumes office and solves problems with conciliation, dialogue, and multilateral wisdom, rather than shrillness, unilateralism, preemption, and my-way-or-the-highway dogmatism. We will hear that, by historical levels, unemployment is still not that bad, that GDP growth is not historically all that low, and that deficits, inflation, interest rates, and housing starts are all within manageable parameters. “Depression” will transmogrify into “recession” which in turn by July will be a “downturn” and by year next an “upswing” on its way to boom times.

Indeed, almost supernaturally crises will be solved with the departure of the hated Bush: no more flooding streets from cracked water mains that were a result of a President’s neglect of infrastructure, and no more spontaneous crashes of Mississippi River bridges due to diversions of critical federal aid from cash-strapped states to Iraq. And when the temperatures rise or drop, the wind howls, the clouds burst forth or go away, the snow melts or piles up, it will be, well, nature that caused the havoc, not the current occupant of the White House who failed to sign Kyoto.

As we watch the innocent die from natural mayhem, it will be due to the breakdown of local responders who now suddenly kill people, not federal inaction—except perhaps for an occasional few Bush federal holdovers that have not yet been rooted out. Human nature, of course, now will be seen more culpable, more selfish, as in needlessly resisting wise and caring federal interventions, rather than being inherently noble but shunned by an uncaring Washington. Yes, when dikes collapse and planes collide on crowed runways, it will be due to a cruel and unpredictable nature, or intrinsic design flaws, or improper local use and maintenance, or the past President’s nefarious legacy, not current government policies. (But if you still must bash the government, it will be wise to do it in 1950s style of inattentive state and local officials, prone to regional and tribal prejudices, blocking the infinite wisdom of a caring federal government.)

It will be an amazing transformation – and it will happen rather quickly. There will be that fine line where one day a blog post out our economic ills will bring lefty comments about its still all Bush’s fault, and the next day it will bring lefty comments about how Obama is already on it and we conservatives are just talking down the economy. We’ll also very swiftly discover that dissent is not the highest form of patriotism. And it won’t take subtle shifts to get the left to do this – they learned their lesson long ago and know that no matter how swift and absurd the change in the party line, it must be obeyed.

There is nothing so mindlessly predictable than liberal/left thinking – we already know what they will do what they will say and how they will react to events. But we also know something else – liberal/left policies uniformly fail, and the most strictly they are applied, the more spectacular the failure. So, the MSM and the left will be “happy/happy joy/joy” gladhanding us while Obama and his Democrats drive us off the cliff, unless Obama has the wisdom to govern from the center. If things go as we fully expect them to, then we’ll be putting a smiley face on disaster, until the disaster grows so large that even the MSM will be forced to report it.

I am happy to tell our loyal readers here that on Christmas morning I asked my girlfriend Beth to marry me…

…and she said yes.

I have lots more to say… but I also have an apartment that is in serious need of cleaning after a long battle with wrapping paper and scotch tape… so I will tell you all more later.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Congratulations, Matt and Beth!!!

UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: …and for those who have been asking about the ring: