This President is not a man of the world.  

His time overseas as a youth did not accomplish what such foreign schooling usually does with young minds in foreign settings. Perhaps, the Muslim schooling he obtained overseas and the odd-ball parenting he received precluded a more 'universal' development. 

Mr. Obama is not timid. He is making choices. He is fundamentally opposed to American influence in foreign states. He is a type of isolationist, though; I'd suspect he is not conversant with the history of isolation rejected in America, by Americans in the 20th Century. 

Mr. Obama knows nothing of the post W.W.II, near east and Arabian Gulf. He could not 'free-style' discuss the Shah and Israel, bomb racks to the Saudi's or Hovercraft fleets. Our current President is not a scholar.

 Americans need to disabuse themselves of the notion of Obama as cognoscenti of the world’s pulses.  

His is a mind of slogans that he formed and philosophies he adopted from his moments in militant college bliss and during his much discussed, 'missing years.' Mr. Obama is a Jane Fonda without the sex appeal and a Stokley Carmichael without the rage. He is not a geo-political thinker or historical man.  

Iran will play out despite his crafted reluctance to have an opinion or to feel any need to say loudly, 'we want regime change in Iran.' 

It just isn't in the slogan playbook and it would give America importance, something Mr. Obama has been nurtured to reject.

Memorial Day approaches.  The day of remembrance is a three day holiday that Americans revel to celebrate with family, neighbors and friends.  Amid the bunting and photo taking, the star-spangled hats and good barbeque, the holiday is emphasized while the dead remain at rest.

There have been attempts to put the poppy back in Memorial Day with congressional overtures that would set a day certain for the remembrance as opposed to the “last Monday in May” that generates the three day holiday that starts our American summer each year.  For so many Americans, Memorial Day is three days and those three days are moments in the ‘Coppertone sun’.

Yet, our dead will not see the sun again.  They will not feel a caress or hear the voices that fill the parks, beaches, rivers’ edge and American yards.   

Every Memorial Day, across the nation and on foreign fields and islands afar, at military cemeteries and U.S. National Cemeteries, Memorial Day is observed by the Veterans Administration and the U.S. Military along with local posts of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.  Here is where Memorial Day shines brightest.

Take your children, your parents, neighbors, friends to a National Cemetery this coming Memorial Day.  There is likely one near you.  If you must drive, take the initiative and go.  Think of how much the day will mean to the families that gather at the grave side of their fallen ones to know that you came to give tribute as a citizen that knows what they lost.  Your family will be made better for it.

If you do not have a military background, did not serve, did not live on post or base as a child, you are the most needed at a U.S. National Cemetery on Memorial Day.  Each Memorial Day, the cemeteries are replete with color guards and valued speakers and those that we see loyally each year.  We note the families of the new dead, the dwindling families of those that fell in the Pacific and European campaigns of W.W.II and Korea.  We see the middle age friends and family of the Vietnam dead and the occasional grave visitor for the deceased of other smaller campaigns where harms way came home hard for one that did not come home.  We need to see you.

If our civilian Americans come and join the boy and girl scouts that plant the American flag at each and every grave they  will make the greatest statement of patriotism the non-combatant can make in his or her life.  You will say by your presence, I did not know you, but today, I stand among you.  Today, I stand with you.  I will take my child’s hand we will walk in and around these stone markers and we will read the names and see the dates and see the names of spouses and we will call out those names and eternity will hear us and bless us for our care and our remembrance.

Wear the poppy pin this year and visit a National Cemetery on Monday Memorial Day.

At Mr. Panetta's appearance today before the Pacific Council on International Relations, he shared the dais and was preceded by Congressperson Jane Harman. 

How Ms. Pelosi must now tremble. She'll quiver before those arrows that now consolidate in quivers armed to her detriment. 

Ms. Harman and Mr. Panetta ... "When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars". The California solution to Ms. Pelosi's tenure is upon us.

Mr. Hengler posted a serious sociological blog piece today titled, “High Schoolers Face 'Withdrawal Symptoms' & 'Confusion' After Going Without Cell Phone, Computer, Or iPod For 10 Days.”

This is one of the critical issues facing our culture. How to breed and develop a class of citizens that have something in common with their land and fellow citizens beyond the ability to play in cyber.

Apart from the atomization that cyber creates per se, is the deracination that occurs when young gadget addicted citizens do not have any contact with anything that came before the immediate cyber moment.

Being an American means knowing something about the America that occurred before your own birth. When I was a child in a small Texas town, I'd go into that small town library and read serial books that had been written 50 years before my childhood. In those texts, I learned and thrilled at "running boards" on cars and tapping trees for sap and all the cultural expressions that came from decades before my own.

In movies, in a small Texas town, I could time travel to America in the inter-war years, learn about the Klan, Prohibition, the golden age of aviation and then the great portrayals of America at War in the Nineteen Forties.

Being an American requires more than the immediate satisfaction of communication and access. Being an American means that you know something about the culture that created the America you live in.

Cyber and the 'gadget' empire may deny many the appreciation of and the foundational knowledge they need to know and appreciate their own country.

Nothing to excess.

Fred Friendly called the abuse of free speech at Universities and University Commencements, "The Hecklers Veto." 

It remains the a-propos reflection as to what we know the left and the marginal’s of the 'progressive' purposes seek to do when they are in a herd. The herd left seeks to deny speech that is not in accord with their orthodoxy. 

The psychological review of these howlers would need to start long before they came to the commencement; indeed it originates with them in the mirrors of self standing and self-worth. By the time the 'hecklers' arrive into the herd, they are enfranchised to bay and be bellicose and deny basic politeness and dignity to accomplished public citizen invitees. 

The lectures given over the Obama protests are bizarre. The left is a one way street that turns one way and then ends at a dismal dead-end. 

The herd is a place for the undeveloped self-congratulating leftist individual and they hate themselves for it.

Christians love beauty. It is a reflection of God's love and trust with us. 

Modesty is a desirable trait in any person, however, in the trades of acting, print work, modeling, etc, we seek the player to be special and talented and pleasing to the eye. 

There is no contradiction between a woman’s breast and her faith in the everlasting Christ. Only those that have no prayer and no sense of redemption rail out at the humanity of Christians.  

Christians are seekers. Those that attack their beliefs think that the voyages of faith require standards that the non-believers wouldn't and couldn't recognize in their own behavior.  

It is no more contradictory for a Christian model to have her flesh seen than it is for a Christian soldier to sight an enemy and create a mist of blood with that enemies head in the distance. Christ recognizes the gradations of conduct and welcomes all that adore him and his Father. 

On the temporal level, breast augmentation is wonderful and the only opponents to it are those with situational ethics or no wherewithal to acquire it.  

As one that lives in the Hollywood community, I see augmentation everyday and in the words of Jay Leno, "ladies we know they're fake and WE DON'T CARE."  

Tens of thousands of women have implants and they do so for many reasons. At day’s end, they feel better about themselves and the feminine frame it promotes for them. When a woman is given the chance to look as she wants and desires, I love the opportunity to enfranchise her with an appreciative look and smile. 

Carrie Prejean is a delight and a great spokesperson for normal Christian life ensconced in a temple of beauty.

In the 100 days of President Obama’s residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the President and his immediate family have not regularly attended church service?  Is this possible?

The public is told the Obama’s are looking for a place to worship.  Is this truthful?  Is it likely, that a man with two children and a Grandmother in residence cannot find in the greater Washington ‘metropole’ a proper and vital ingredient for his Christian family?

Or is it, that for Mr. Obama, his long association with the Chicago Church of Rev. Wright was the defining and irreplaceable ‘faith’ community of the President and Mrs. Obama’s life.  Why cannot this President attend a different church every week in Washington?  Would that not be an ecumenical statement for the President?  A statement that would be flush with the President’s message of inclusion?  What is it about the practice of communal faith for Mr. Obama that requires it to be in the scorched earth church of Rev. Wright but not in any other as the new President?

Now, truth be announced, a President and his wife do not need to be faith practitioners in our political scheme.  If the Obama’s want to renounce church attendance for themselves and their daughters as some Jacobin statement, then they are entitled to do so.  The public is entitled to know however as their profession of faith itself has not been renounced by the Obama’s and to the contrary, they have for purposes of election, styled themselves as Christians.

So, I call on the President and Mrs. Obama to take their children to any and all churches in the Washington area.  Go Lutheran one Sunday, Methodist the next, and Four Square after that.  Attended Baptist Churches, Catholic Mass, and even Jewish Temple and Moslem prayer on occasion but get out in the public and be seen in service.  Otherwise, be known as the couple that long for the assembly at Jeremiah Wright’s and be sincere about it.

He reminds how in trying times some songs have boosted the spirits and he invokes a couple that represented a needed optimism in their day.  It made me immediately think of Petula Clark.

In a small Texas town or in ‘big ole Houston ’ in 1965, nothing could invoke an uplift and a sense of ‘gettin going’ like Petula Clark's "Downtown."

Music does play to the ear at first blush and then to the memory of the time and place.

For me, the beat and lyrics to optimism will always call up Petula Clark with her short blond hair, petite, pretty presence and easy way with a tune.  As Ms. Clark is the same age as my own petite, short haired blond mom, Pet Clark stays with me and invokes all the past that once stood as the promise of the future.

In Houston, in 1965 a wee lad could go to Herman Park and marvel at the big locomotive or walk into the fantastic new Warwick Hotel as transistor radios blared out "Downtown" around you.  “Downtown”, like Papa Hemingway’s “Movable Feast” is always resonant.  If you experienced it, lived it, then you’ll never lose it.  It’s a touchstone for optimism; it's ensconced in your expectations.

"When you're alone

And life is making you lonely,

You can always go downtown

When you've got worries,

All the noise and the hurry

Seems to help, I know, downtown

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city

Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty

How can you lose?

The lights are much brighter there

You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares and go

Downtown, things'll be great when you're

Downtown, no finer place for sure,

Downtown, everything's waiting for you"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GVE7lRZuFM

Like wise the CEO of Chrysler that might have driven in a 64 Barracuda Coup or the CEO of GM in a 66 Camaro ...

Cars didn't need to be huge, they needed to be exciting.

Break out the museum keys.

Now that would be a proper statement for the new American President on behalf of his nation.

In 732 AD, Charles Martel, (Charles the Hammer) and his Frankish infantry stopped a Moslem army of up to 400,000 under the command of Abd-er Rahman that is arguably the most important victory ever garnered by the Christian West over a foe bent on destruction and conquest. The battle at Tours ended Moslem conquest of Western Europe ... (until recent immigration policies etc.)

Now I know this President (and to be sincere no President) would make Tours their site for a statement to Islam as we battle the insanity that rages from within it but it would be a great declaration to those that only understand immediate and complete defeat.

If Mr. Obama goes into any Moslem capital and gives the world that pathetic bromide that America is not fighting their religion, only those that have hijacked it with terror and homicide, his speech will fail its purpose. He'll only show how out of touch he/we are with how to fight. It will embolden the extremists to kill more in that very capital just to show how they received the message.

A proper Islamic site might be an appearance at Hagia Sophia. At least it would be in a site where East straddles West and the rivalry between the secular West and religious fundamentalism is kept in check by a national identity that seeks a balance between radical Islam’s no mans land and a heritage that encompasses a world view.

Turkey over Jakarta, Istanbul over Cairo but a quick tour of the Loire Valley and a stop and nod at Charles the Hammer in the City of Tours if the President Elect wants to make a sound statement that will be heard by friends and foes alike.