Today

....I took my last vacation day of 2006. Well, actually, my next to last, but I won't be able to take my last one before the year runs out. Hey, it's an improvement; last year I left three or four vacation days on the table.

Of course, it seems like every time I take vacation, something goes wrong at home that prevents me from enjoying it. Back in August I had several fires to put out, not least of which was the motherboard on this machine I'm using at this very moment burning out in the unseasonable summer heat. That little dealie took nearly the full week I took off to get replaced and all my software re-loaded. Thanksgiving went okay, but last weekend the power went out in a winter hurricane for three days, which also happened to be the coldest days of the year. And now today my internet connection has been phasing in and out, making any kind of full posting regimen a practical impossibility.

So I ate half a pizza and took a nap. At least I did something enjoyable today.

Checking the headlines, I'm reminded anew of why I've found blogging motivation so difficult to muster over the last month.

***The Enemy Media already has the long knives out for GOP presidential hopeful and ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and is smearing Christian evangelicals at the same time:

As a clean-living, church-going father and grandfather, Governor Mitt Romney has a natural appeal among conservative Christians.

The Massachusetts Republican, though, faces a delicate dilemma: How does a devout Mormon woo religious activists critical to winning the GOP presidential nomination when many of those same activists are openly hostile to a faith they consider no more than cult?

For his all-but-announced presidential bid to succeed, Romney must win primary votes across the Bible Belt from people whose churches have a historical antagonism with his own Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"The rhetoric between evangelicals and Mormons has been almost abusive," said Richard Mouw, president of the Fuller Theological Seminary in California, the largest evangelical seminary in North America.

Sheesh, didn't we go through this once already with JFK's Catholicism? Alright, let's take this from the top:

Is Mormonism (aka E.T., the Extra Testament) a cult? Why, yes, it is. And if Mitt Romney came to my door with tracts and a proselytization pitch, I'd feel the urge to pitch him into my front flower bed.

But Mitt Romney won't want my soul; he'll want my vote. He's not running for National Vicar, he's running for president of the United States. And as far as the choice between Romney and Hillary, well, I'm reminded of what Winston Churchill once told the House of Commons: "If Hitler invaded hell, I would give at least some favorable mention to the Devil." Except that in this case Hillary is both Hitler and Satan.

Oops, did I just run afoul of Godwin's Law? Well, tough tarmac. It's gonna be a long campaign, best get it out of the way early.

***Talk about de javu:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is taking what he learned during three days of meeting with military and political leaders here directly to President Bush.

Gates, due back in Washington from Iraq on Friday night, was scheduled to see Bush at Camp David first thing Saturday morning, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser Stephen Hadley and deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch, who has been coordinating Bush's review of Iraq policy, were also to attend the discussions at the Maryland mountain retreat where Bush was spending Christmas.

As the President weighs a course correction in the increasingly unpopular war, the White House also announced that Bush would convene a meeting of his full National Security Council next Thursday while spending a few days at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. That session was not designed to arrive at final decisions, but to continue to whittle down the options, Perino said.

Note the editorializing ("a course correction in the increasingly unpopular war"). Betcha could guess that this was off the ASSociated Press wire, huh?

I can't imagine why Gates went to Baghdad, other than to formally inform the Iraqis that we're bugging out as soon as next month when the Democrats officially cut off war funding. The ISG report was the be-all and end-all, after all. We're losing, we always lose, we can never win anyplace against any foe with any means, we should never defend ourselves, we should turn the whole world over to our enemies and go home to watch Star Trek: Voyager marathons until the jihadis come with their nukes to kill us all, and would you like fries with that? I don't know how Gates would have translated that into diplomatic Arabic, but I doubt the Iraqis had any difficulty getting the gist of it.

Only thing he could report back on was how they took the handwriting that the American electorate scrawled on their metaphorical wall last month. Kinda makes Bush's new call for rebuilding the military, including boosting troop strength in Iraq, look like public relations suppression fire to cover an all-fronts retreat.

By the way, is Okinawa now in the Middle East?

***If you have difficulty believing that George W. Bush would sign off on surrendering to the terrorists, you need to start paying closer attention, because it fits in with his surrender to the Democrats on pretty much everything else:

Eager to show he heard the message of voters who stripped his party of majorities in both the House and Senate in the November elections, Bush said he'll work hard on what he called "an interesting new challenge" — trying to find common ground with Democrats who will lead Congress for the first time in his presidency.

"I don't expect Democratic leaders to compromise on their principles, and they don't expect me to compromise on mine," he said. "But the American people to expect us to compromise on legislation that will benefit the country."

He said initial consultations with incoming Democratic leaders revealed openings for cooperation in several areas. One was an immigration policy overhaul, including a way for some illegal workers to move toward citizenship. That was stymied this year primarily by conservative Republicans who favored a get-tough-only approach.

Other openings Bush saw for cooperation were increased federal spending on alternate energy sources; reform of Congress' appropriations process that has made it common for lawmakers to slip pet projects into spending bills, and giving American workers new skills and businesses help investing in new innovations.

When the Democrats have lost, have they ever been "eager to show they heard the voters' message"? Bleep, no - they whined that they "didn't get their message out" and vowed to shriek it even louder, and to fight Bush and the Republicans even harder. And eventually, with a big assist from the GOP's RINOization of late, they succeeded. So why isn't Bush adapting a defiant, pugilistic pose? Because he's a Bush, and Bushes don't get partisan, even during election campaigns.

Bushes are also clueless, as evidenced by Dubya suggesting that the Donks don't expect him to compromise his principles. That is true, in a sense - they expect him to abandon his principles altogether on his way out the Oval Office door after his Nixonian resignation just before his impeachment. And to take all remaining congressional Republicans with him while he's at it.

And he'll do it, too, because Bushes are also not conservative. The GWOT has obscured this to a dramatic extent, but the fact is that the only domestic policy area where Bush the son has ever diverged from Bush the father is tax cuts. Otherwise he's been a Rockefelleroid born and bred, and he'll find all kinds of "common ground" on which to "compromise," even though none of the resulting legislation will remotely "benefit" the country, other perhaps than putting a great deal more of us on government "benefits." And don't be surprised if that doesn't include his signing a tax increase.

All I know is, all those purist conservatives who were so hell-bent on "teaching the Republicans a lesson" about their overspending are now going to get exactly what they deserve for their idiotic short-sightedness as the Democrat-RINO alliance busts a fiscal gusher. It is, after all, one of the things the American people voted for, whether they know it or not - and you'll never convince me they didn't know it.

***Our enemies certainly know it. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's XO, had a merry ole time making fun of us this week:

"The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen - the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq - are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost," Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News.

Zawahri calls on the Democrats to negotiate with him and Osama bin Laden, not others in the Islamic world who Zawahri says cannot help.

"And if you don't refrain from the foolish American policy of backing Israel, occupying the lands of Islam and stealing the treasures of the Muslims, then await the same fate," he said.

Obviously Zawahiri expects that the Democrats will make good on their "anti-war" word and withdraw American forces from Iraq, at the very least. He has no compelling reason to believe they will not, nor that President Bush, the Donks' new lapdog, won't go right along with them.

Expecting the Democrats to open up negotiations with al Qaeda may be a bit of a stretch, but several Dem senators are already attempting to do so with Syria's Bashar Assad independent of the Bush Administration (or perhaps with their tacit blessing; it's guaranteed Bush won't object publicly), and we're already negotiating with Iran, and the ISG report is a big, fat telegraph of the imminent direction of US foreign policy, so a Bush-bin Laden summit meeting (or perhaps a Pelosi-bin Laden summit after Bush and Cheney are removed) can't be entirely ruled out.

What's that, you say? I'm being sardonically hyperbolic? Well, maybe a little; even I don't think there'd be sixteen Senate Pachyderms who would vote to remove Dubya and Big Time from office, nor can I bring myself to believe that the "New Tone" would stretch so far as to compel the President to break bread with the cave-dwelling mass-murderer. But quitting the war against Islamic Fundamentalism wouldn't require such stomach-turningly obsequious symbolism - as the Dems themselves very well know.

At any rate, the ridicule of our enemies is hard enough to swallow. Get a load of this story:

The leader of an al Qaeda-backed group offered to refrain from attacking U.S. forces if they withdrew from Iraq within a month and left their heavy weapons behind, according to an audio tape posted on the Internet on Friday.

"We call on (President George W.) Bush not to waste this historic opportunity which insures you a safe withdrawal," said the speaker, identified as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, head of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq, which was announced in October by al Qaeda and groups linked to it....

"We are awaiting your response within two weeks of this announcement," said the speaker in the tape, which was dated December 22. He said insurgent groups would refrain from attacking withdrawing U.S. forces if they left within a month.

Okay, I'll say it: Who the frak is Abu Omar al-Baghdadi to be giving the President of the United F'ing States of America ultimatums? Answer: a jihadi who saw our mid-term election results, added two plus two, and didn't come up with five. And, once again, it is an entirely reasonable and rational expectation for him to have.

On November 7th, the American people signaled retreat to the world and waved the white flag to our enemies. And our enemies are reacting, and planning, accordingly. Even if we don't fulfill their fullest expectations, the task of winning the war has now become grievously more difficult and will be far more costly and elusive.

There's an old saying: "In a democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." It calls to mind a line from an old Beetle Bailey cartoon. Beetle and Plato are talking politics and Plato quips, "If you don't like the government, wait an election and you'll get one you like even less."

Do the American people deserve to die? I refuse to answer that question.

But that's how they voted. God willing, it's a deathwish that will remain unfulfilled.