Imperial March - John Williams

I am pleased to announce that I have been chosen to provide the music for Obama’s forthcoming inauguration as President of the  United States of America.   After thoughtful consideration, none of Obama’s (or McCain’s) favorite songs made my short list, but I did find the perfect music in the end.  If it was good enough for Luke Skywalker’s dad, it’s good enough for the author of Dreams of My Father.  It will be heartwarming to see Obama finally place his hand over his heart as the band plays on.

Enjoy.  Laugh, if you can.

While you can.

Darth Vader graphic by Erin Watson Photography (flickr).

I was actually disappointed at first when the long-awaited blogburst finally arrived tonight.  Now?  On the Eve of Destruction?  Even I can’t keep my mind on the jihad or the Flight 93 monument just now, and I’m quite literally obsessed.  About the only matter on my mind—and, I’m sure, yours—is Tuesday’s presidential election, and this thing is a lot closer than polls have been showing.  Of course, it shouldn’t be this close, since one contender and his associates resemble Rasputin and his influence over the royal court.  Is there not a mountain of objective evidence to demonstrate that Obama is unfit for the office and unworthy of public support?

It turns out blogburst author Alec Rawls was in the hospital, so I certainly hope he’s alright, but there’s definitely nothing wrong with his critical reasoning faculties.  Today’s post is not only timely—it’s about Obama and the plethora of damning facts that have gone largely unreported by the mass media—but it shows how uncannily similar our electoral dilemma is to the Flight 93 memorial scandal.  In both cases, mountains of inconvenient facts and questions have been downplayed, rationalized, obfuscated, or simply ignored by those responsible for reporting the whole unvarnished truth and for asking hard questions in pursuit of truth.

In Shanksville they have simply decided that Murdoch’s monument is the only fitting memorial to the Flight 93 heroes, and on Main Street lots of likewise deluded and misled Americans have simply decided Obama is “The One.”  Alec doesn’t extend the analogy, but it can’t go unsaid that in Washington and in most of the rest of the free world our leaders also seek to suppress objective truth, refusing even to acknowledge the fundamentalist and dogmatic Islamic ideology that is at the root of all Muslim militancy and terrorism.  It goes unnamed and unidentified even though it is as plain as day.

We are told to ignore that Islamic fanatics are blowing stuff up and igniting conflicts in virtually every nation on earth, and we are expected to believe that Islam is, of all things, a religion of peace.

   Photo by lintmachine (flickr)

One of the last online stories run by The New York Sun before they folded at the end of September concerned reports of an “October surprise” by al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists.  To many observers, it stood to reason that we could see a repeat of the 2004 Madrid bombings, which propelled Jose Zapatero and his Socialist Party to power, whereupon his first major act was to withdraw Spanish forces from Iraq.  Digital chatter on Islamic networks was hot when The Sun ran the story, so the warning wasn’t really all that outlandish.

The story was picked up by blogs and news organizations big and small, but despite similar warnings by Brigitte Gabriel (as I reported here) and others, the prevailing wisdom was that a terror attack before the national elections is unlikely because it could trigger support for John McCain, who it is presumed is the more frightful (to jihadists) of the presidential contenders.

I haven’t prepared a midweek post because I’ve been expecting the Flight 93 blogburst which, for me at least, is not simply a matter of uploading.  I always prepare a brief but thoughtful introduction, and I thoroughly edit the essay and reformat the photographs, graphics, and animations.  Additionally, I code the blogburst with an array of meta data, optimizing the post for Google keyword, image, and blog searches.  It’s a dirty job.

Waiting for the missing blogburst to arrive has got me in another pensive mood, musing about what I’d rather be doing—thinking about why I do this at all.  And hearing the silly twit in the video express himself in song reminds me of all the incredibly gifted and talented bloggers and artists engaged in the counter-jihad and in defense of western traditions and values.  Inspired by the limitless human spirit, they used to spend much of their time in Bohemian pursuits, voraciously consuming great art, music, and literature and tirelessly honing their own aesthetic skills.  They had hoped, all of them, to write great books, to compose symphonies, to capture beauty on canvas, and to make powerful and unforgettable films.

Where did they, where did I, go wrong?