The Conservative Soldier

Another installment of News to Amuse (the alternatives being open weeping, and/or going, as they say, completely “postal”).

Item: Presidential aspirant Barrack Hussein Obama quickly dismisses suggestions that he go to Iraq for a look around, until the fact that he has not set foot there since 2006 (more than 870 days) is seized by rational thinkers as indefensible. (Obama is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which also is a fact but seems like a bad joke). It is quickly noted that Obama has said he would meet in the future with Iran’s maniacal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (if he becomes President) but does not appear interested in meeting in Baghdad with American Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of a winning strategy in Iraq that Obama deplores/ignores.

So the good news here is that, little by little, we are getting to know the mysterious Obama. And it is starting to feel like a visit to a sausage-making plant. Each door that is opened reveals important detail that holds increasingly less appeal.

We now know that he never sees trouble coming. And that he will react, on a dime, to shifting political winds. Within days of rejecting a trip to Iraq (first offered up as part of a bi-partisan visit with Sen. John McCain), the Obama camp was insisting that Baghdad is on its calendar “later in the year”. This episode might also be telling us that Sen. Obama is, in the final analysis, just another cowardly limousine liberal.

Item: New York Gov. David A. Paterson directs all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, especially Massachusetts, California and Canada.

While he’s at it, maybe Paterson should throw a bone to his former boss in Albany and demand recognition of opposite-sex hook-ups motivated by cash on the barrel. I mean, we’re trying so hard (you might say bending over backwards, but I’m not digging the visuals) to show understanding and compassion for gay couples. Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to embrace one form of social deviance rejected by a majority of Americans while penalizing another? I’m sure Eliot Spitzer could not agree more.

Item: In the same week, Tennessee lawmakers admit that appointing rather than electing judges was a bad idea, while, in Davidson County, Tenn., a county clerk rules that it’s now OK for illegal immigrants to receive marriage licenses and go to the altar (reversing a decade-old ban).

Proponents of allowing undocumented residents to be legally married say they are recognizing a fundamental right. (Apparently, this goes hand in hand with their fundamental right to demand uninsured medical treatment, driving privileges and untaxed income).

Perhaps when the citizens of Tennessee begin to elect judges again, they’ll install judges who will have the backbone (and the common sense) to reject these marriages for what they are — yet another catalyst of unbridled illegal immigration.

Item: A Chicago area school district bans birthday cakes in adherence of a new “wellness” policy.

Not for any lack of hot air to put out the candles, mind you. Seems this school board in Arlington Heights, Ill., also has banned cupcakes as birthday treats.

What, you don’t get the logic? Let me explain. The reason our kids our fat and lazy has nothing to do with the junk they’re permitted to eat at home, where mom and dad are just too busy to toss a salad or grill some fresh fish. The reason our kids are fat and lazy are those three or four pieces of birthday cake they eat every year at school. I mean, c’mon, we can’t expect the parents to be responsible for their kids’ diets.

Item: Texas Supreme Court rules children from polygamist compound must be returned to their mothers because there is no evidence the kids were in “immediate danger”.

Nothing says traditional values like families spawned by teen-aged mothers, married against their will to older men, giving birth to children who will live their formidable years and be “home-schooled” inside a remote rural compound.

Pass the Kool-Aid.

And here we thought Rev. Jeremiah Wright was the crazy old uncle.

Turns out another of Sen. Barack H. Obama’s so-called uncles was the real nutjob. He shows up, the Senator reports in a recent tale from the stump, at Auschwitz of all places while doing a military tour during World War II. We learn later (from Obama damage control, aka, Uncle Watch) that the Soviet Red Army already was signed on to liberate the Nazi’s prison guests at Auschwitz.

So we are left to imagine that, like Forrest Gump, the Obama uncle did a wartime cameo on behalf of U.S. forces. A nose for photo-ops must run in the family.

Maybe he forgot to change trains in Munich en route to Buchenwald.

Obama, during his campaign gaffe du jour, also mentioned that the uncle (apparently, a great uncle) came home from the WWII theater and locked himself in the house for six months. We’ll never know if this is accurate, but we can only assume that Obama was confusing the past with what he’d wished for Uncle Jeremiah. An attic with a view.

We ventured off across America for Memorial Day weekend. Rather than go on complaining about the airlines, their attitudes and their soaring, shameless new fees, we simply boycotted them for a change. I placed all of my luggage in the back of a mid-sized German SUV, and, gleefully, did not charge myself for the second, third and fourth bags. Liberating, to be sure.

Driving 500+ plus miles from suburban Chicago to Nashville, Tenn., provides a pleasant reminder that gasoline, even at $4.00+ per gallon, is still pretty cheap, relatively speaking. In a mid-sized, 25 mpg German SUV, one can drive roundtrip to Nashville, more than 1,000 miles, for about $250 including lunch stops, or for around $83 per person in a family of three. What am I missing here? Is this excessive?

The real upside of taking to the road is that I am now able to credibly refute what many have suspected all along: that the mainstream/dinosaur/drive-by media has talked America into a recessionary, despairing mindset. According to the news readers and various wrist-wringing social commentators, everyone is “hurting”. The U.S. is a veritable Dust Bowl. Vacations are being canceled. Lives are turned upside down. And why? Need you ask? Because, you religion-clinging nit wits, the federal government and George Bush aren’t doing enough and don’t care about you. About us. All of us.

Out in America, from the farmlands of Indiana, to the rolling springtime beauty of Kentucky, to the vibrant music mecca of Nashville, this despair, this dark cloud, was not what we discovered during the Memorial Day weekend. Just by listening (Hillary, I believe, would say we’d accomplished a Listening Tour), I was encouraged that we are not in the Final Days, merely marking time until the Great Barack and the Empress Michelle rise to power and bring about sweeping CHANGE.

Out there across the fruited plain, I heard:

Local talk radio conversations focused on the gallantry and resolve of our American military, and expressions of great pride about what they have accomplished and will achieve in Iraq and Afghanistan and, if necessary, Iran.

Gasoline fueled vehicles zipping past. Transport rigs. Motorcycles. Huge RVs. SUVs. Pickups. America is still moving. Interstate 65 heading south was packed with folks heading to the Indy 500, or beyond, to the splendor of Old Kentucky thoroughbred farms, or to the sprawling Opryland Resort in Nashville.

Great country music, America’s music, performed before yet another full house at the Grand Ole Opry.

A congenial Tennessee-born bellman who said, “God Bless You”, when accepting his tip.

The buzz of hundreds upon hundreds of guests dining (and, yes, overdining), cocktailing, sun bathing, photographing, and celebrating inside the Opryland resort complex. Tickets for Sunday’s nearby General Jackson riverboat luncheon cruise and floor show nearly were sold out when I bought ours.

To the chagrin of the media lefties who desperately want to see our nation on the verge of economic collapse by Fall, just in time for Obamarama ‘08, my report from the road is that Americans are generally fat (frighteningly so) and relatively happy. Is everyone obscenely rich, paying for their fuel by peeling from a wad of 100s, ordering freely from the reserve wine list and partying with Paris Hilton? No. But, as we always do, Americans will persevere, work hard, love their kids and ride out whatever economic dips may come our way.

Why, on the General Jackson riverboat, the mostly average looking, middle class, predominantly senior folks, even applauded heartily for the live entertainment, the Peking Acrobats. I thought we’re all supposed to be honked off at the scheming Chinese for dissing the Dalai Lama and for consuming ever more gas and, thus, driving crude oil barrel prices through the roof?

We’re supposed to be a nation overpopulated by angry, economically ravaged, coupon clipping, war weary people who have canceled all leisure activities and parked our cars for good. Believe the media drum bangers, or treat yourself to a $100 tank of gas and go have a look at what’s really happening out there.