"we need to have a conversation" is the Progressives way of saying "nice doggie" until they can find a rock to bash its head.

-- Jonah Goldberg on AEI's Banter Podcast #100

Started badly.  A 37 minute delay from CMH to ORD.  It was easily explained.  Missed my connection so had an extra three hours in ORD.  I used to love grabbing a Western Omlet at the little Cubs place on Concourse G.  I've had 4 this month.  Not so much of a treat anymore.

Made the Orlando flight in the last seat.  Surrounded by kids.   Tured out to be AMAZINGLY well behaved and I made sure I complimented and thanked the parents upon arrival. 

The car was sweet.  PERFECT BMW 650i convertible.  Took about an hour to get all the paperwork squared away but it went smoothly.  Drove about 10 minutes down the street, learning the buttons, etc., then pulled over to a BK for my first stop.  A Whopper, sweet tea, dropped the top, keyed in the podcasts and we're on our way.

I've driven through Orlando four times in the last two years.  It is ALWAYS stop and go for no apparent reason.  Thankfully I had a long NFL draft preview and The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America   That got me to Jacksonville and THREE accidents ... cost me about 40 minutes.  And HAve I mentioned how much I HATE bridges.  Especially bridges like THIS one where you can't see the other side.

Rolled into Georgia.  Temp had droped from 89 in Orlado down to the low 80's, big puffy clouds.  I LOVE my life!  Grabbed some java, flipped to another hour of draft prep and Wounds That Will Not Heal: Affirmative Action and Our Continuing Racial Divide

Georgia goes by quickly.  The smell of the salt marsh, the ocean ... and something else (it IS SEC country after all) filled my lungs and provided a welcome diversity.  Beautiful salmo moo rising at my three was joyous.  By the time I hit SC the draft had started and the temp was dropping.  Now into the low 70's.  I cleared Columbia before putting the top back up.  NC was filled with FFL stuff and Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know  which I highly recommend.

When I crossed into VA I opted to stop at the Welcome Center and grab 2-3 hours of fitfull sleep.  VA, the WV turnpike and home to Ohio.  Six hours to go.  Moon was setting on my ten, still keeping watch, now a pearl onion, sinking into the martini of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  More pods and some driving music.  Multiple sunrises as Sol and I darted in and out of the valleys.  Stopped for coffee in Sissonville WV.  It's in the Poca Valley.  The Sissonville Indians rival?   Guess. And fwiw people of Sissonville - you have a VERY nice clean little McDonalds there.  Friedly and spotless.  They should ALL be at least HALF as nice.  The phrse "neat as a pin"comes to mind.  Thank you.

Skipped the Ravenswood exit and went on up to Parkesrsburg and across 50.  Was nice and different.  Not sure if it stays as the route of preference.  Home by noon.  Missed the gas budget by about $30.  Chalk it up to bad mileage in the mountains.

There was a joke back in the bad old days of the Cold War - y'know how you can tell when Pravda was lying?  They'd say "It is well know that ..."

You HAVE to think POTUS has heard it, dontcha?  I mean, he HAS to know.  So it makes this just that much more chilling:

In his extraordinary temper tantrum in the Rose Garden last Wednesday afternoon, President Obama told the nation that he simply couldn’t understand how a bill with 90 percent support could be defeated by the Senate. “By now,” the president claimed plaintively,

it’s well known that 90 percent of the American people support universal background checks that make it harder for a dangerous person to buy a gun. . . . So while this compromise didn’t contain everything I wanted or everything that these families wanted, it did represent progress. It represented moderation and common sense. That’s why 90 percent of the American people supported it.

As Charles Cooke went on to note over at NRO last week

Obama might have been perplexed at the failure of his pet project or he might have been pretending to be perplexed. Who knows? Either way, it should have been be fairly obvious to anybody who follows American politics that his statements were contradictory. It makes little sense simultaneously to hold that ”90 percent” of Americans wanted the Senate’s bill and that 40-plus senators caved in fear of losing their seats. Likewise, it it is nonsensical to argue that the NRA is extremely powerful and that it is also way out of line with American democratic opinion. The “gun lobby” works by telling voters, “your representative voted like this on guns.” Then the voters vote. The “gun lobby,” contrary to the president’s implication, does not have a vote. If the NRA steps too far out of line, it will lose its power.

Convinced by his own rhetoric, the president urged:

So to change Washington, you, the American people, are going to have to sustain some passion about this.  And when necessary, you’ve got to send the right people to Washington.  And that requires strength, and it requires persistence. 

Clearly, “the American people” did not get the message. A USA Today poll released today asked the question, “Should Congress pass a new gun-control law?” 49 percent of respondents thought that it should, 45 percent said that it should not. Five percent didn’t know or refused to answer. (The margin of error was +/- 4 percentage points.) The answers were collected between Thursday and Sunday — in the aftermath of the Senate vote and the president’s speech, in other words. USA Today’s up or down inquiry is considerably more instructive than is vague talk of ”background checks.” Unfortunately for the president, it shows that there really is no great groundswell of support for changing the status quo. One can only presume that Barack Obama wishes he had known this before he went on television and explained that he couldn’t get a bill with 90 percent support through Congress, but then sometimes life ain’t fair.

there would be eye rolling and much gnashing of teeth.

In two recent comments (POTUS speaking of his daighters' getting a tattoo and FLOTUS appearing on Life After Top Chef)  the"First Adults" used the same malformation.

SHE said "I told the girls your father and me would eat the same things..."

HE said "I told them your mother and me would get one too."

Perhaps it's bacuase I'm teaching a remedial English course but this one drives me freakin NUTS!!!!!

edit to add: almost forgot, when H Clinton was on her way out the door POTUS praised her as "One of the best Secretary of States's ever"

if you're wondering, it's Secretaries of State

Wonder if anyone in the media dares to ask the question. 

in August 2009 the Obama administration announced the U.S. was no longer engaged in a "war on terror," nor was it any longer pitted against "jihadists."

Since that announcement, U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan attacked U.S. soldiers in Ft. Hood, TX on Nov. 5, 2009, killing 12 and wounding 32 others. It has been widely reported that the military knew Hasan allegedly had ties to Islamism; victims claimed that if someone acted on that knowledge lives could have been spared.

On Christmas Day 2009, a 23-year old Nigerian student name Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab tried unsuccessfully to detonate a bomb in his underwear aboard Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit. Inspectors say Abdulmutallab had more than 80 grams of PETN, but his detonator either failed or was not the proper type.

In May 2010, a bomb in an SUV was discovered before it ignited in Times Square. Investigators believe the origin of the idea for the bomb plot came from the Pakistani Taliban. 

These were just some of the successful and attempted terror attacks that predated April 15, 2013, the day Chechen brothers with alleged Islamist ties set off two bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing 3 and injuring 176.

One of those killed was an eight-year old boy, directly behind whom one of the bombs was set.

Once the suspects of the bombing were identified, the city of Boston was on lock-down until one of the suspects was killed and the other was apprehended. The Boston Marathon Bombing was readily described as an act of terror. 

So, is the War on Terror still over? 

Mayor Bloomberg on Boston Bombing: "Our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

a pal passes along this “60 Minutes” interview with one of young Tsaraev’s friends, Ahmad Nassri:

If someone a few days ago told me that one of my friends was responsible for the bombs, bombing in Boston, I would’ve named off at least 90 percent of everyone that I know before I would’ve said Dzhokhar.

sounds like that social circle needs some investigating!

Matthews on Tsarnaev Bros.: ‘What Difference Does It Make Why They Did It?’

more to come, of course

which is most of America it seems ....

the defense has rested in the Gosnell trial w/o calling the defendant to the stand.  No real surprise there.  He'd hafta talk about what he was doing.  And for how long he's been doing it.

James Taranto in the WSJ takes a little walk down Dr. G's Memory Lane:

Among Taranto’s other observations, I’ll highlight the Mother’s Day Massacre of 1972:

A young Philadelphia doctor “offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women who were bused to his clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972, in their second trimester of pregnancy.” The women didn’t know that the doctor “planned to use an experimental device called a ‘super coil’ developed by a California man named Harvey Karman.

A colleague of Karman’s Philadelphia collaborator described the contraption as “basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. . . . They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, . . . the gel would melt and these . . . things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus.”

Nine of the 15 Chicago women suffered serious complications. One of them needed a hysterectomy. The following year, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It would be 37 more years before the Philadelphia doctor who carried out the Mother’s Day Massacre would go out of business. His name is Kermit Gosnell.

He's been very busy for a very long time.  War against women indeed.

Sylvia's Mother

"and the operator says 'forty cents more for the next .... three .... minutes"

D is watching Life After Top Chef.  Cook off at a Dallas 5th grade, judged by FLOTUS.  Her grammar is ATROCIOUS!  Did YOU hear about it?  Of course not.

In another segment a new restaurant was opening and they were reviewing the menu.  Owner asked "who knows how to make an Obama burger?"  Not ONE of the two dozen employees did.  I obeserved it was like Obamacare - nobody knew what was in THAT either!

I got the hairy eyeball.  "Must you ALWAYS ..."

Yes.  So long as they keep running in front of the camera.