BACK

I have returned from vacation, having posted nothing for a long time. I will correct this forthwith. The Carolina weather was alternately stormy and sunny. The storms had surprisingly little influence on my fishing, as they rumbled along to the south my like the freight trains of Olympus. Fishing was sparse as it was flounder season and I have not fished with live bait and sinker for many years. Mullet started running just about the time I left. My only catch is to be seen here. The delectable Greta Saachie, who was wandering about on the beech, agreed to display my catch to best effect.

The Carolina Coast is everything the Jersey Shore aspired to, but could never be. No wonder so many North easterners have pitched up there.

Washington was its usual hot, hectic self and the heat really interfered with my stay. A lovely friend did her best to entertain but a hot bear is an angry beat and I fled northward with a hangover and a car full of dirty clothes and Carolina sand.

GODDESS SIGHTING IN PRINCETON

Dr. Nancy Snyderman lives in Princeton. How delightful. I had no idea and frankly I consider her a walking demi-goddess. How long has she lived here? Why haven't I seen her? I consider her extremely sexy and that is despite viewing her giving birth on TV. Too bad she's married. There has been a great influx of ugly people into Princeton in the last quarter century and a beauty of her caliber will improve the view no end. Now I must master the camera function on my cell, just in case.

HOLDER SCHUCKS AND JIVES

Eric Holder exposed his rather limited intellectual gifts before the House Judiciary Committee today. He cannot be expected to answer questions from Republicans in the manner and form that the Republicans want. But it is shocking that he has so little facility in lawyerly back and forth that one must seriously doubt his abilities. Time after time he failed to handle simple questions. He seemed to be blindsided by questions that, given the topics of the day would seem inevitable. He rejected hypothetical questions that were clearly within the realm of likelihood. Astoundingly, he claimed to believe that it is safer from the point of view of the American public, for him to release Guantanamo inmates into America, than it would be to keep them out altogether. Now this is clearly nonsense. It goes beyond bizarre and into the soggy lowlands of stupidity.

This and other of his unenlightening statements show the man for who he is. He is an affirmative action policy hack who happens to be Attorney General. Cogent forensic reasoning or simple logic is just not his forte. He is there to enforce the President's agenda. And on this occasion, he was not properly briefed by his master in the White House. So let's not expect too much of him, now or in the future.

THE POPES MISSION TO THE HOLIER THAN THOU LAND

The Pope is insufficiently self abasing for his critics in the Holy Land. Israeli newspapers are full of references to his cold demeanor and his failure to apologize for what we call "the Holocaust." I put Holocaust in quotes because it is a recent locution meant to focus attention on the six million Jewish victims of the Third Reich at the expense of the approximate 5.5 million other victims of the Nazi's who did not happen to be Jewish.

Precisely what is the Pope supposed to apologize for? For being born in Germany? For having been dragooned into the Hitler Jungen when he was a youth? For serving his country as a child soldier in an anti-aircraft unit? Or was he just supposed to atone for all Christians everywhere for every bad turn they ever did to any Jew since the 1st century? From the statements issued by the Speaker of the Israeli lower house of Representatives, you'd think the Jesuits were running the camps in 1942. The fact that the Nazi's despised Christianity at least as much as the speaker never seems to come up. The Speaker did make a point of mentioning that the Pontiff is of German blood. So I guess the old business of blood libel runs in only one direction now. This unhealthy desire to have people apologize in perpetuity is an unseemly and counterproductive element in the Jewish Catholic dialog. The Pope keeps reaching out to Jews and Muslims and both seem fixated on grievances alone.

In this latest visit the Imam speaking for the Muslim Brotherhood echoed his Jewish counterpart in finding not enough public abasement from this kindly old German priest regarding a comment about Islam's early history of military conquest. This last falls into the category of Hate Facts. Hate Facts are the equivalent of hate speech except they happen to be true. We are to understand now that factual statements that happen to put given groups in a bad light are just as objectionable as falsehoods aimed in the same direction. So if I say that 100% of made men in the Mafia are Sicilian, this is a true but unpleasant fact. If I say that something like 90% percent of American pornographers are Jewish, that's definitely a hate fact. And of course I apologize for bringing it up.

The Pope needs to realize that no one is interested in having a dialog with him in the Middle East. He is nothing more to the regional players than a convenient punching bag. He needs to have a dialog with the Episcopalians. Perhaps he can help lead them back to Christianity.

SALVATION IN THE BUSHS?

Can Jeb Bush really see himself as a Republican national leader? Haven't the Bush's done enough to us already? The nightmare of yet another of these clueless, tone-deaf inadequates inflicting themselves on us is all too real. Here is Bush's summation of our present predicament.

"You can't beat something with nothing, and the other side has something. I don't like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that."

Notice that Jeb doesn't venture a guess as to just what that something is. He's not being coy. He really has no idea. Except that the President's gibberish of "hope and change resonates with the public." I imagine that a promise of free cable TV would resonate just as well and Jeb is just the man to promise it, if it will get him elected. The danger of the Bush's is that they are political Idiot Savants. They have a genius for one thing only, getting elected. Beyond that the idiot part kicks in, and stays in, locked in place.

Fortunately for us Jeb is part of the GOP has beens roadshow, traveling the country. He is trying to reinvent the party in the company of McCain, Romney, Eric Kantor and a small army of those last seen as pallbearers at the party funeral a few months ago. These drones are in shirtsleeves now pretending to listen to the slobs, I mean the base, to get a handle on where the party need to go from here.

If this mummery was any more transparent, they'd be doing it in the nude. What the party needs is for this crowd to retire from politics and join corporate boards like failures of old. The Republican Establishment has led us into failure in war, commerce and social policy. They campaigned as Roundheads and ruled as Cavaliers for a generation and nothing they say can, or will, be believed.

It's likely that in our current state of our decline into mass democracy, Conservative Government is impossible. In another generation the legacy population here will be outnumbered by Third World migrants. There may be alternatives at some time in the future, like partition. But as to leadership of the GOP, I think it's too soon to tell. My guess is that our future will be dependent on Obama's mistakes. Our leaders will be those among us who best fit the role of anti-Obama, just as Ronald Reagan was the anti-Carter.

MEXICAN EFFICIENCY AND AMERICAN COMPLACENCY

According to the AP a few hours ago...

A portrait is emerging of a slow and confused response by Mexico to the gathering swine flu epidemic. And that could mean the world is flying blind into a global health storm.

Despite an annual budget of more than $5 billion, Mexico's health secretary said Monday that his agency hasn't had the resources to visit the families of the dead. That means doctors haven't begun treatment for the population most exposed to swine flu, and most apt to spread it.

So things are proceeding in the usual Latin manner. Meanwhile, our Homeland Security Czarina has health inspectors hiding behind the airports drapes on the lookout for peckish looking arrivals. This, they describe as a robust response.

And of course we mustn't close the border. That would be insensitive.

CLOSE THE BORDER

While the Chinese are set to export Twenty Thousand Dollar faux Rolls Royces the Mexicans continue to export themselves, mainly to here, the USA. Unfortunately, they are bringing swine flu with them. The Administration in DC, represented by by Janet Napolitano, the Janet Reno of our age, can't decide which is more important, keeping the American People safe, or keeping La Raza happy. By the time she closes the border, a real epidemic will be raging in our cities and Hispanic rural areas. This would be outrageous is it were not so totally expected.

The "Good" side of this is that it may drive a steak through the heart of multi-culturalism in our sad Republic. Almost every eatery I go to is staffed by Mexican kitchen help. They come and go between Mexico in complete secrecy. They live in dormitory conditions in rented housing, a perfect vector for contagion. It is already obvious that the locations first and hardest hit by this new epidemic are areas of Mexican illegal alien movement and employment. First World nations with social welfare schemes sharing common borders with Third World nations, are always at risk for precisely this sort of calamity. If enough of us sicken and die the cowards in DC will change their tune. I mean who will be left to pay their salaries?