The Seven Stages of Leftist Descent

The always-insightful poster Engraved-On-His-Hands at lucianne.com just made a brilliant observation, so brilliant that I'd like to share it in full.

The post is made in reaction to an Air Force Times story detailing a recent modification at the Air Force Academy, giving a "sacred space" to so-called "pagans."

EOHH had this to say in response:

There seems to be various steps or progressions, not only in this particular subject, but in many others affecting our culture. The steps include, but are not limited to, the ones that I hastily put down below:

1. ''You are crazy for suggesting that something like that could ever happen around here.''

2. ''It's not that widespread, and it would cause more harm than good to outlaw it.''

3. ''A lot of good people, including some of my friends, participate in it.''

4. ''It's really not that bad.''

5. ''Those who oppose it are extremists who are worse than the problem itself.''

6. ''We need as a society to marginalize those who oppose it.''

7. ''We need to enact laws to prosecute and silence the bigots who oppose this.''

(Well, is your seat in the handbasket all comfy now?)

Exactly. Exactly.

"Imagine a Free Vermont"?

Time Magazine, in the first article worth reading that I've seen in a long time, covers the secessionist fantasies of a bunch of middle aged paleocons in Vermont who'd rather pull out of the Union than continue to bear the 'burdens of empire.'

These guys need to imagine, not a Free Vermont, but a Vermont after a one megaman-army marches through it.

We don't do secession in the United States of America.

We do this instead.

Obama's True Message to GOP (0:25 Sec Mark)

Nothing more need be said. Alas.

Roeder Convicted of Murdering Tiller

Scott Roeder has been convicted of killing late term abortionist George Tiller.

This is as it should be.

By this act he brought disrepute to the prolife movement.

Prolifers don't commit murder.

That's kinda the point.

However, I should comment on the following from the above-cited LA Times article:

Tiller, 67, who was beloved by his patients...

...uh, you can say that this is a half-truth.

Chemical Ali Byebye

Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali," convicted in four separate war crimes trials for various crimes against humanity and the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples, went to his eternal reward yesterday at the hands of an Iraqi court-directed hang man.

Seems to be a bad day for mass murderers all around.

The Good Die Young

The NYT reports:

Ruth Proskauer Smith, a longtime reproductive rights advocate who helped found what is now Naral Pro-Choice America, died Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 102.

May the Risen Christ, Son of the Triune God, have mercy on her coal-black soul.

ADDENDUM

Besides her son, Anthony, of Manhattan, Mrs. Smith is survived by a daughter, Gael S. Arnold, of Washington; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Wellllll.... ITHN'T THAT THPETHIAL!

"We Choose Not To Go To The Moon.... "

".... Not because it is hard but because it is easy." - Barack Obama

Just to Remind Us!




Note to the reader:

I ran this story in August.

I'm going to run it again until somebody appreciates it.




The great Chinese explorer Zheng He (or Cheng Ho).


They're reporting that the Moon rocket program has been axed.

Not enough money, they say.

Fine, then. They think it's better to spend our money on socialized medical insurance. Or to give to the banks. Hooo...kay. Elections have consequences.

But let me tell you a story.

When the Ming Dynasty (refounded by the Emperor Yongle) took over China after a period of chaos in the early 1400s, he discovered a source of great potential wealth: a huge swath of land that had been set aside as a hunting preserve for the old dynasty.

The Mings chose to sell the land to the peasants in small lots. This generated a huge surplus of money.

After some debate, the Mings decided to spend the cash on .... exploration ships. They chose a remarkable individual, Zheng He (also known as Cheng Ho), famously a eunuch, to command the ships.

This account (from Wikipedia, thank God for their free-use rule!) sums up his career very well.

Zheng He's first voyage consisted of a fleet of around 300 ships (other sources say 200) holding almost 28,000 crewmen. These were probably mainly large six-masted ships....Zheng He's fleets visited Arabia, East Africa, India, Indonesia and Thailand (at the time called Siam), dispensing and receiving goods along the way. Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain and silk; in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, ivory and giraffes.

Zheng He ... ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and southeast Asian waters. He also intervened in a civil disturbance in order to establish his authority in Ceylon, and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa. From his fourth voyage, he brought envoys from thirty states who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court.

In 1424 [his primary sponsor] the Emperor Yongle died. His successor, Emperor Hongxi (reigned 1424–1425), decided to curb [Zheng He's] influence at court. Zheng He made one more voyage under Emperor Xuande (reigned 1426–1435), but after that Chinese treasure ship fleets ended. Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a tomb in China, it is empty: he was, like many great admirals, buried at sea.

Zheng He, on his seven voyages [1405-1433], successfully relocated large numbers of Chinese Muslims to the nascent Malacca, which became a large international trade center.

What is important about this story is that after Zheng He died and the fleet returned, the Chinese abandoned further naval exploration. Had they tried to travel due east, they likely would have discovered America through the back door--and America would be half Chinese today. As it was, the Ming Dynasty turned inward, abandoned naval exploration... and became a very sad second-best to the Europeans, who started to explore the seas just a few years after China abandoned them. As a result, China is still not even competitive with the European Union, much less ourselves.

We have the choice, and the chance, not to repeat their mistake.

I'm confident that Obamism and all its pomps and works will be destroyed and in four years the grown ups will be back in charge. All this decision means is that the landing has been delayed by four years.

I ask you to remember the last line from the great movie Apollo 13 (known in this household as 'Daddy's Movie'):

"When are we going back? And who will it be?"

ADDENDUM: This one's for the Tattered Remnant. A guy who volunteers for this kind of duty HAS to have been one of the club.

Charles Johnson? Is that YOU?

There's a report that a man was arrested at an airport with 44 lizards in his pants.

No further comment is necessary, methinx.

So Much for the ACORN Exposé

If reports are correct, the individual responsible for the Acorn exposé videos was arrested for a Federal felony today.

James O'Keefe, the filmmaker responsible for breaking the back of ACORN with his 'undercover' filming of ACORN decisionmakers, was arrested for -- get this -- apparently trying to break into Senator Mary Landrieu's office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in New Orleans in order to interfere somehow with their telephone system.

Three other young men were also arrested, including Robert Flanagan, the son of William Flanagan, who is the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana. All have been charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.

Now, Republicans of a certain age know better than to try to plant bugs in Democrat offices. I seem to recall there was some trouble a few years back when something like that happened, and if memory serves, it didn't end well.

This young man, O'Keefe, if he really was involved in a monumentally stupid attempt to bug Democrat offices, deserves to go to jail. He should also know, however, that not only has he just won himself a prison sentence, he just discredited his own work and unleashed and reinvigorated his enemies at ACORN, who will certainly use his criminal behavior - if it is that - at the Boggs Building as an excuse to reinvigorate itself. In the end, we can watch them transfer its own well earned opporbrium onto O'Keefe's apparently hollow noggin.

Christ on a crutch and Lord above.

What were you THINKING, DUUUUDE??!?!!?

ADDENDUM

When I say "So much for the ACORN exposé" I don't mean either that the exposé itself is bogus or that Andrew Breitbart, who brought it to light, had anything to do with the above mess in New Orleans. I AM saying that Mr. O'Keefe's days as a creditable source for anything are hereby terminated, unless there is some chance (God knows what!) that the arrest is not what it appears to be.

Andrew Breitbart himself denies any connection with any of the four other than O'Keefe, and denies knowing what he was up to. Click here for more.

Fridge Pic #015: 1 PIC = 1 KWord

(Hat tip: Free Republic)

A Victory for Free Speech in America

The United States Supreme Court, last Wednesday, revolutionized and reinvigorated free speech protections in its decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (558 U.S.____, Docket No. 08-205, January 20, 2010). An excellent legal summary of the decision itself can be found here.

You can spent an hour or two reading a zillion articles to try to figure out what the hell went on.

Or you can watch THIS video, which summarizes it very well in less than five minutes.

I'm not a big fan of the CATO institute--libertarianism is NOT my cuppa tea--but I'm glad they're here to tell us these things.

And I'm glad they now can't ban stuff like this.

We have a new most-junior Senator....

.... and I just wanted to remind you who Scott Brown replaced in that role.

WashPost Journo: Racists Will Elect Palin

One Jon Jeter, a blogger at www.theroot.com, has a bad case of the vapors.

He is sensible to the degree that he sees, clearly, the utter incompetence and inability of the Obama administration to cope with our difficulties.

And he sensibly sees that Obama's inabilities are paving the way for a President Palin.

However, his analysis of how we will get from here to there is like looking in a funhouse mirror. All the attributes are present but the picture presented is highly distorted. To say the least.

For starters, he sees that

[T]he economic crisis that is most comparable to the current situation is not the Great Depression, or the 1981 slowdown, but Japan’s decade-long recession that began with the bust of its real-estate bubble in the early ‘90s.

Okay, as far as it goes.

However, he sees the response to this by conservatives in flyover country as "tribal."

Like the defiant, segregationist Alabama governor, Palin, the former Alaska governor, speaks the language of the white Southern and suburban voters who fear that the American way of life is under attack from an out-of-touch, Godless, effete and multiracial big-city crowd. With her folksy charisma and parochial values, Palin is the latest in a long line of demagogues —from post-Reconstruction governors in the Deep South to Father Coughlin in the ‘30s, from Reagan to Lou Dobbs—who’ve emerged to redeem, or reclaim, the land from Northern carpetbaggers and uppity Negroes.

Astounding.

It's all about racism. Always, always, always.

Got news for you, Mr. Jeter. It's not about your race. It's about our choices, all of us, white, black and in between.

Jeter is right that it is very likely that America will elect President Palin in 2012 whether the national Democrat socialists like it or not.

He is accurate in that our situation is like that of Japan in the 1990s. The reason the housing market collapsed in 2008 is the same as the Japanese real estate collapse 20 years ago: all that borrowing was based on a supposed inevitably increasing price for housing, arising from endless new demand for housing... but there suddenly was no burgeoning demand for new housing. Oops.

The reason why there was not burgeoning demand for new housing is that not enough young people were aching to buy houses in the market.

The reason why there are not enough young people aching to buy houses is because huge numbers of those who might be buying houses were exterminated in utero by the peculiar institution we call "legalized abortion". That's about two in seven conceived since 1973. (And about 1 in 3 African Americans!)

And this is EXACTLY why Japan is in permanent economic stagnation. They've aborted so many of their children that there is no hope for economic growth.

There are 50 million or so missing Americans--25 million of them would be between the ages of 18 and 35 right now, and of them, we can expect, oh, maybe about 10-15 million potential home buyers would have been out there had they not been aborted.

The reason the Left hates Sarah Palin has nothing to do with her "parochialism." It is due to fact that she and her daughter reminds each one of them, father or mother, who ever aborted a child of their "choice." And I fear that the Left will do anything, anything at all, to avoid having her and those who support her from controlling the national government because they do not want to be confronted with their own, personal contribution to the mass killing of our nation's children.

And for the writer, above, who fears Palin's "racism"--how can she possibly be a racist when she, unlike Obama, wants there to be many more black children born than are born now? (Leaving aside the additional inconvenient truth that her husband is, ahem, non-white.)

Yes, it's about the economy. And yes, it's about Obama's manifest, total and irredeemable inability to be an effective President. But it's ultimately about our national self-destructive behavior of insisting that we abort freely and without consequences.

But there are ALWAYS consequences to evil.

Always.

"I tremble for my nation when I reflect that God is just."

Our economic troubles are not God's punishment for abortion: it is merely that He allows us the consequences of our choices. If we jump off of a bridge, He lets us hit the bottom... although we may (may) have a few seconds to reconsider and repent before we hit the ground.

And it is truly dismaying that someone like Jeter, who one would think should know better, blames it, indeed everything, on racism. But then, if he knew better and wrote the full truth, the WashPost probably would not have hired or promoted him; they would have found some other politically correct leftist to write in his place. PC journo school grads are a dime a dozen. There are always plenty of, oh, Jayson Blairs and Stephen Glasses out there who are willing to, er, get the real story.

Tattered Remnants #025: Ray Vivier

(Read all about the Tattered Remnants by clicking {here}.)

THE MAN HE BECAME: RAY VIVIER

I have been, and remain, a staunchly anti-elitist individual. I find the idea of belonging to a special group the most dangerous philosophical ground you can stand on. But what is remarkable about this Remnant is that the people that compose it seem to be drawn completely at random. It is not a philosophy. It is a frequency. You are on it or you are not. And this is not a million-dollar lottery win, either: it is a call to face unpleasant facts and impending hardship. It is a quiet summons to duty. It often makes one uncomfortable, and, most often, this unfocused, vague desire – this need – to do something useful most often makes one feel very much alone.

What’s remarkable about the Remnant — to me, anyway – is the sheer unpredictability of its composition. Perhaps that homeless drug addict, panhandling under the overpass… perhaps he will be the one to run into a burning building while other decent and good people stand idle, waiting for something to happen.

Waiting for someone to happen.

--Bill Whittle, You Are Not Alone, Part 1, the essay that inspired the Tattered Remnants series.



His name was Ray and he was a homeless wreck.

He had been fighting alcohol for years. He had spent most of the previous months living beneath a bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. When young, he had been a United States Marine, once, but had only lasted a year. He wandered the Left Coast of our country, never quite settling down. He hadn't seen his ex-wife for decades. His children had lost touch with him; no word had been received from him for fifteen years. He was sixty-one years old and had nobody--nobody except his fellows in the boarding house. They didn't even know his right name.

And yet, when he died, unidentified, in a Cleveland boarding house blaze, he died in glory.

The fire, in November 2009, was caused by arson--two men deliberately set fire to the building for undisclosed reasons. There were nine in the home when the fire broke out.

Three within the building were trapped and burned to death. But the others were awakened and removed from the building by Ray. He repeatedly went back into the building and carried his housemates out.

He saved five.

But he was gravely injured and collapsed outside the building after his final rescue. He was taken to a hospital, suffering from severe smoke inhalation and burns from his efforts. He died in agony.

And he lay in the hospital morgue for weeks as nobody knew his true name or his next of kin; it seemed likely that this anonymous hero would be buried in a pauper's grave, unmarked and unremembered.

After some old friends heard word of the fire–-friends who went back to Cleveland from Pennsylvania to identify his body--he was given a name. He was identified as Ray Vivier.

He was inurned on January 23, 2010, in Arlington National Cemetery, his ashes placed in a columbarium overlooking the Potomac, within sight of the Mall, after a funeral attended by more than a hundred of his family, his friends–and those who admired him, his ashes in a gold urn.

When he was laid to rest, he received full military honors.

"I am proud of the man he was becoming," his daughter said. And it could be said that, no matter his struggles, in the end, he succeeded.

There can be no better epitaph for any of us.

I do not have a picture of Ray Vivier.

But God knows him well. May he sing His glory forever.

Charles Johnson: 'Weasels Ripped My Flesh'

A profile of Trelayne, the Squire of Gothos, in the New York Times no less. Money grafs:

THE QUESTIONING OF Johnson’s tactics started to come not just from without L.G.F. but also from within. ... Johnson insists that ... no one has ever been banned from L.G.F. merely for disagreeing with him — but the anecdotal evidence to the contrary is voluminous, and the fact that the offending comments were instantly and permanently deleted makes it impossible to check others’ records against his.

AND:

Comment threads all over the blogosphere were hijacked by people sharing stories of their banishment. Another stalker blog — this one assailing Johnson from the right — sprang up, administered by banned former “Lizards,” as L.G.F.’s registrants are known. Johnson responded by posting those former registrants’ real names and photographs on L.G.F. — an astounding breach of civility on the Internet, where anonymity is often prized above all else.

This sucks. Credite experto. (For the benefit of Charles, that means "Trust him who knows." Firsthand.)

Most hilariously of all, a quote from Trelayne his own self:

“I don’t know why things can’t just stay on the level of the factual,” he said. “I don’t know why everything has to have a slant. I mean, The New York Times has a slant, and in the past I’ve called them out for that.” He sighed. “I miss the days of Walter Cronkite.”

In other words, Trelayne is every bit as thin skinned a whiner as we thought.

And he views as his hero a Communist sympathizer who helped turn Southeast Asia over to the North Vietnames Army, Pol Pot, and their killer minions.

RZZZZZ!

ADDENDUM

The Squire has this to say about NYT's account:

I have a few significant disagreements with the angle taken by Jonathan Dee in his profile for the New York Times, most of all his willingness to accept unverifiable anecdotal information from people who post comments on the Internet under fake names, to claim that their LGF accounts were blocked simply for disagreeing with me — a claim which, in the vast majority of cases, is simply not true.

I am Richard L. Kent, Esq. I am attorney in Eastpointe, Michigan. I work at a law office at 22815 Kelly Road, Eastpointe, Michigan, 48021-2073. My phone number is 586 202 6170. I'm making this public because Charles and his mob of diseased flying monkey maniacs outed me when I dared to challenge his bad behavior, and when they put my personal information on his blog, he didn't bother to delete it.... thereby making him a party to their calls to get me fired. (Fortunately I'm self employed, and my boss just loves me unreservedly.)

I post my real contact information since it is a matter of public record and can be verified by anyone willing to spend five minutes on the Web trying to track me down. Besides, Charles himself allowed it to be posted to his blog.

And I'm here to say so because the fact that people's LGF accounts were blocked simply for disagreeing with him is absolutely true. I have seen it. And I say so under my own name.

It didn't quite happen to me personally because I resigned his blog first. But, after I resigned, he then outed me, revealing my personal information to the world in gross violation of the trust given him, in the same way that he outed those now running "Blogmocracy 2.0." aka LGF2. (The fact that one of those he outed, LGF2 flounder "Rodan" is a vile, genocide cheerleading hate-punk, doesn't change the fact that Charles absolutely shoudna done what he did.... i.e., using information from his donor page(!) to track down and out those who diss him.)

But I am here to tell you that Charles' whines about those he has banned are the whines of someone who is guilty as charged.

GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!

And if he doesn't like my saying so he can go screw himself.

"Bless me, Father, .... "

"... for I have sinned."

It has been far too long since I have been to Confession....

Father, this is kind of hard to explain.... you see, about ten years ago, I was stationed in Bosnia as a peacekeeper. I lived in a US base near Tuzla and drove around the back roads of the northern part of the country helping to keep the Croats, Muslims and Serbs from restaring the war of 1995.

Well, my sin is possibly one of blasphemy. Or at the very least, idolatry.

Everywhere we went, every hour of every day, we were required to wear a little plastic bag around our necks. In the plastic bag went our SFOR ("Stabilization Force") ID cards, and our military ID's. The point was that we were supposed to be able to identify one another on sight.

Well, we were far away from home. And we were very frightened of being in a hostile country where one wrong step could set off a land mine.

So, as soldiers do in hostile territory--we called it "Indian Country", very un-PC of us--we turned to religious observation to invoke the help of God Almighty to protect us.

Many of us, being Protestants, started carrying and reading one of the many freely available Gideon Bibles. Those of Jewish background suddenly discovered the Sabbath prayers and avoiding pork. And we Catholics turned to our traditional standbys of holy objects, rosaries, and other "sacramentals." These went into our little plastic ID pouches.

Shortly after I arrived, a woman friend of mine gave me something particularly special: it was a bit of the Sacrament--the Host, "Holy Communion", the Consecrated Body of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ--which she had bought from a street seller in Croatia. It was a tiny bit of Communion host embedded in a tiny plastic case.

"I'm not Catholic, I'm Jewish," she explained. "But I understand well how sacred this is to you and I thought it was evil that some guy was selling this like it was a hot dog on the street. So I bought them all and I've been making a point of giving them to my Catholic friends."

Now, I am sure that, were this actually consecrated, it would be the grossest blasphemy to have this on (rather than within) my person. The Host is a Sacrament, not a mere sacramental, and this meant that every time I sinned, from swearing up to whatever, I was doing so in His direct Presence.

And yet... and yet... it was an enormous comfort in times of danger. And while there was nobody shooting at us, there was plenty of danger in Bosnia. (Ever walk in a minefield? Ever see an open mass grave? Ever fly a helicopter blind in fog in the mountains? No? I have. I don't recommend it.)

There were times I might well have lost my cool and cried like a child without the ability to hold that thing in my hand when I was in deepest fear.

Shortly before I left the country for good, I gave it away to another soldier, who, I trust, gave it to another, .... and so on.

My conscience is pricked because I read about an artificial kerfluffle being sounded in certain quarters concerning the fact that some sniper rifle sights have been engraved with Biblical references--and that same has been decried by the soi-disant "Military Religious Freedom Foundation".

Now, having inappropriate markings on combat rifles can be a bad thing. I remember the legend (don't know if it's true) about how the shoulder stocks of the first M-16 rifles were marked with the corporate logo of their manufacturer.... Mattel.

Plus, I seem to recall the problems arising when the Reagan administration wanted to name a nuclear wessel* after Corpus Christi, TX.

Be that as it may, I must say that in a technical sense, those objecting to Bible citations on rifle sights are right, sort of. It is not a good idea to put references to the words of Jesus Christ onto an instrument of instant death. I, for one, might worry about being on the receiving end of a lightning strike. (And I *certainly* would not want to name a Final Counterstrike mechanism after the Body of Christ.)

More importantly, I am sure that putting bible references on a sniper scope would give some Constitutional lawyers a bad case of the vapors. ("We can't do that! Cuz... cuz... cuz we can't!")

On the other hand, I recall that a few years ago, America cheered at the hard-core-fundamentalist-bible-quoting U.S. Army infantry sniper named Daniel Jackson, played by Barry Pepper, who prayed "Blessed be the Lord Our God, who teacheth my fingers to fight, and my hands to war," immediately before using his U.S. Army issued sniper sight to kill Nazis.

"We sleep safe at night because rough men stand ready at night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." And some of those men are deeply committed (if, arguably, theologically shallow) Christians, who battle in the face of an implacable enemy who would, indeed, do us, and him, immeasurable harm if they could.

And these men (and women) need all the help they can get.

Anyway, if there is any truth to the Catholic faith, I am sure that carrying the Body of My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on my person for two years in a war zone is far more blasphemous than carrying a sniper rifle with "code words."

Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.... if indeed I have.

And I must admit that I am sorriest that I am not really very sorry at all. It was a comfort to have You with me.

-------

*That's not misspelled, that's Chekov. ("Where are the nuclear wessels?")

Sen. Franken Called For Violent Overthrow of US Gov't

A few nights ago I had the strangest dream.... Al Franken, the United States Senator (who, last time I saw him, defamed my beloved Bosnia as a "shit hole") was on a stage calling for nothing more or less than violent revolution.

Well, I googled it.

Turns out I was remembering an actual event. October 21, 1978. I must been, what, sixteen years old? Anyway, Al Franken and his buddy Tom Davis were filmed saying... THIS:

Al Franken: Thank you, thank you! Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! It's GREAT to be back!

Tom Davis: That's right. And, tonight, we'd like to stick our necks out a little bit on national television, and call for a violent overthrow of the United States government! [ he bows, as the audience applauds ]

Al Franken: Thank you! Thank you! You see, besides being a professional comedy team, Tom and I are international Communist revolutionaries... and we believe that nothing can really be changed in this country, through the Democratic process! [ brief applause ] Oh, thank you! We're glad a lot of you feel that way!

Tom Davis: Right you are, Al. You see, in a Capitalist society, anybody who's running for public office is automatically corrupted by... well, instead of telling... why don't we show you?.... (cut to pointless comedy routine)

Well, as it turned out, Al DID show us. We just had to wait thirty one years.

(The above script is from an appearance on Saturday Night Live, but is presented just to let you know that (a) Al Franken actually said this, and (b) that he was just, ahem, kidding.)

(Right?)

Guess the answer to this is 'yes'....

....in light of yesterday's election results in Massachusetts.

Teddy, We Hardly Knew Ye

In August 2009, this blog bade a fond farewell to Teh Loin of the Senate, Edward (Ted) Kennedy, the Submariner, as he drove his metaphorical car over the Bifrost Bridge, alone this time.

We made the following snide comments:

His death at this moment reduces the Democratic majority in the Senate to 59 votes, thus making it mathematically possible to stop socialized health care until his successor is elected, which should take, oh, about six months.

Thank you, Senator, for your contribution this day to the continuation of American freedom.

We never, in our fondest fantasies, ever dreamed that the door that hit him on the way out would open the way for stopping Obamacare flat.

Again, Senator, we AGAIN thank you for your lasting contribution to the continuation of American freedom.

And we rejoice in the victory with knowledge that there is much struggle yet to come.

You. Just. Gotta. See. This.

From YOUTUBE:

"A rookie secret agent is faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase."

Doncha hate it when that happens?

PS. That really is 16th Street Northwest, Washington, DC, and yes, it looks just like that.

Aside from the nuclear pigeon.