LOL The Right-Wing Valkyrie Is Right On!

POLL: MOST AMERICANS LOVE COULTER COLUMNS!

March 22, 2006
(Copywright 2006 Ann Coulter
Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate)

Bush has lost his momentum, Americans' support for the Iraq war is dwindling, and opposition to Bush policies is hardening. That's according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll being covered as if it were a real news story.

Like callers to talk radio claiming to be Republicans angry with Republicans, liberals love to pretend public opinion is always in the process of shifting in their direction. They can't win elections — Democrats have gotten a majority vote in a national election only two times since FDR was president (Lyndon Johnson in '64 and Jimmy Carter in '76). But they're always experiencing an upswing in the polls.

Clinton could never get a majority of Americans to vote for him but, according to the polls, as soon as the public found out about his sex romps with Monica, his support shot up to above 80 percent. Bush did get a majority of the country to vote for him less than two years ago. Now we're told 70 percent of Americans hate the man.

Indeed, according to the polls, the public's feeling about the war in Iraq began three years ago with fear, skepticism and dread — and steadily went downhill.

If these poll results were accurate, support for the war should be about negative 3,000 percent by now. The public would have stormed the White House, seized the president and flogged him to death.

Here's a sample of New York Times headlines on stories discussing poll numbers since before the Iraq war began in March 2003:

— Poll Finds Most in U.S. Support Delaying a War (2/14/03)

— Opinions Begin to Shift as Public Weighs Costs of War (3/26/03)

— World's View of U.S. Sours After Iraq War, Poll Finds (6/4/03)

— Study Finds Europeans Distrustful of U.S. Global Leadership (9/4/03)

— Despite Polls, Pataki Backs Bush on Iraq All the Way (10/3/03)

— Poll Finds Hostility Hardening Toward U.S. Policies (3/17/04)

— Support for War Is Down Sharply, Poll Concludes (4/29/04)

— Rising Casualties, One Falling Poll (5/2/04)

— Polls Show Bush's Job-Approval Ratings Sinking (5/14/04)

— Bush's Rating Falls to Its Lowest Point, New Survey Finds (6/29/04)

And then — despite the fact that every single man, woman and child in America opposed the war in Iraq and despised George Bush — a few months later, Bush won re-election against well-respected war hero John Kerry.

Immediately after the election, public opinion polls showed Americans turning once again against the war and against George Bush, according to the Times:

— Americans Show Clear Concerns on Bush Agenda (11/23/04)

— Public Voicing Doubts on Iraq and the Economy, Poll Finds (1/20/05)

— Bad Iraq War News Worries Some in GOP on '06 Vote (8/18/05)

— Support for Bush Continues to Drop as More Question His Leadership Skills, Poll Shows (9/15/05)

— Iraq's Costs Worry Americans, Poll Indicates (9/17/05)

— Most Americans Find Cindy Sheehan Attractive, Interesting (2/8/06). OK, I made that one up. The rest were made up by the Times.

The media are constantly telling Americans what they believe: You are dissatisfied ... You are getting more dissatisfied ... You are slowly becoming utterly dissatisfied ... Your dissatisfaction is now reaching a fever pitch!

News coverage of public opinion polls is barely justifiable in an election year. When there's no horse race, these cooked-up polls are nothing more than the mainstream media's long, monotonous brainwashing of the public.

At least the old subliminal ads for popcorn in movie theaters operated by stealth. Today's mainstream media engage in open conditioning of the public in a fantastical scheme to shift public opinion.

Noticeably, there's always an odd disconnect between what the polls say and what people actually do.

Despite the fact that — according to the polls — the "American people" are fed up with the war Iraq, only a few hundred anti-war protesters showed up in New York City last weekend. The naked cowboy in Times Square gets a bigger crowd than that.

Despite the fact that polls show the public is ready to throw in the towel on Iraq, members of the House of Representatives, or "the people's house," recently voted 403-3 against withdrawing the troops.

Despite the fact that 70 percent of the public thinks Bush is doing a lousy job, when they had a chance to put someone else in the White House a mere 15 months ago, they decided to keep him.

There is, however, one poll taken by millions of Americans every day, year in, year out. Based on plummeting viewers, circulation numbers and ad rates, we can say with some certainty, the American people are beginning to loathe the liberal media.

[Note by Republicus: Republicus has friends who work for The Washington Post. One of them works in the headquarters in downtown DC, and the other works for the Online version in Arlington, Virginia.

What is happening is that while print circulation is indeed falling, the Online service is growing. This phenomenon is occuring in the entire printing industry as civilization is ineluctably transitioning from print to digital publication.

But yes, Coulter is right: The American people have gotten the liberal media's number and, overall, competing conservative publications--and broadcasts-- have eaten into their formerly-reliable profits.

And yes, liberals try to use polls in a disgraceful exploitation of the herd mentality to adolescently peer pressure "minority" opinion (i.e. conservative) to jump on some phantom bandwagon because: "What's the matter with you? Don't be an oddball! Everyone's thinking it!"

Meanwhile, of course, they simultaneously try to champion their own true minority of "elite" ideology --as revealed by electoral results and the very fact that no "elite" liberal can ever hope to win the presidency unless they ape of conservatives--on the grounds that the majority is "brainwashed" or "stupid!"]

The Christo-Fascist American Taliban

A few months ago, President Bush spoke out against against the House deliberations regarding the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

He said that the proposed legislation would put the fledling democracy and the good Iraqi people at risk, and that such a proposal was "mean-spirited" and "certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures, because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself."

The Left SCREAMED and thrashed about like a vampire getting a crucifix hammered into its heart.

Actually:

On Wednesday Hillary spoke out once again against the House bill to prevent and punish illegal immigration, only this time she claimed she had God on her side. Mrs. Clinton said the proposed legislation is "mean-spirited" and "certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures, because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself."

The Left smiled and applauded.

Republicus on Immigration

Read the prologue to Republicus.

And Google "Aztlan" and understand.

It's an invasion.

Passing The Test?

That's Abdul Rahman up there, folks, an Afghani Christian convert who-- as far as the Islamic clerics in Afghanistan are concerned-- must be executed as "allowed" by the vestigial elements of sharia that slipped into the progressive Afghan Constitution.

And behold, Afghanistan's first Church vs. State controversy!

The "Church":

CLERICS INSIST ON EXECUTION OF CONVERT
By Daniel Cooney
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
March 24, 2006


KABUL, Afghanistan -- Senior Muslim clerics demanded yesterday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces."

No worries, people. That's just typical Middle Eastern histrionics from a crowd that used to control or supported the Taliban government.

It's much like the histrionics of the Lefties here who used to control or supported the Clinton Administration, histrionics like "I hope Bush gets assassinated!"

Just a lot of noise from unhinged fanatics "demanding" they get their way.

The State:

A government official said "He is likely to be released soon."

Let's just hope it doesn't take an insanity plea to do it.

We'll see.

An anonymous guest of Republicus expressed their frustration in the commentary section of the March 22 post "The Test" because they felt that the United States was being too wishy-washy about laying down the law of Democracy and Freedom.

Republicus understood but also reminded Anonymous about the political gamesmanship that is required while maneuvering towards an objective.

Like TR said:

Speak softly but carry a big stick.

The coalition indeed carries a very big stick, and the soft-spoken diplomacy is tempered by what emanates from the United States:

There is no more fundamental issue for the United States than freedom of religion and religious conscience... We have raised it in the strongest possible terms to make clear that it is our great hope and desire that Afghanistan will reaffirm what is already in its constitution, that the universal declaration on human rights will be respected, and that this will be resolved in a way that is consistent with those principles.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice

I'm troubled when I hear, deeply troubled when I hear, the fact that a person who converted away from Islam may be held to account. That's not the universal application of the values that I talked about. I look forward to working with the government of that country to make sure that people are protected in their capacity to worship.

President George W. Bush

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper telephoned Karzai on this issue.

He said about Karzai: "He conveyed to me that we don't have to worry about any such eventual outcome....He assured me that what's alarmed most of us will be worked out quickly ... in a way that fully respects religious rights, religious freedoms and human rights."

But look what's going on: You have the Afghanistani executive branch standing for Western liberalism, while the judiciary fixates on the strands of Taliban sharia which snuck it's way into the Constitution:

"Afghanistan's Supreme Court said Thursday it was trying to find a 'good solution' to the case, the first of its kind here, including persuading Rahman to revert to Islam.

Sharia law, on which the Afghan constitution is partly based, rules that conversion away from Islam must be punished by death if the accused person fails to revert."

Afghanistan is an Islamic country and its judiciary will act independently and neutrally...No other policy will be accepted apart from Islamic orders and what our constitution says.

Afghan Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada

But wait, didn't Secretary Rice say:

...our great hope and desire (is) that Afghanistan will reaffirm what is already in its constitution, that the universal declaration on human rights will be respected.

Yes she did, and she is correct. The Afghan Constitution does uphold those values--along with the institutionalizing of the balance of power between the executive and the judiciary, the latter interpreting the clashing contradiction in its favor.

Afghanistan is having its first Constitutional crisis, ladies and gentleman.

We can only hope--while persuading and urging--that Karzai pre-empts his own country's civil war by winning what is analogously similar to our own Dred Scott decision of 1857.

Whatever happens, as things are now, this issue does not indicate a "failure," or a "debacle," or a "sham," but is proof that the fledgling democracy is undergoing the normal labor pains of a new birth.

We must strive to ensure that the newborn is neither miscarried or aborted post-partum by scissors-weilding Jihadists.

Republicus can not say whether the strands of sharia that have been woven into the Constitution will end up being a virus that freezes it up or whether the intellectual activity that will try to achieve reconciliation will find ways to liquify--and liberalize--it.

May the irrational, histrionic fanatics lose (there as well as here).

Wafa Sultan

In the 3/07/06 post "Western Intellectual vs. Islamist Shiek," Republicus reproduced an Al Jazeera interview with an up-and-coming voice that is--Republicus believes-- precisely what the Muslim World needs to hear.

Here is a follow-up of that interview (Republicus thanks his friend Terry S.):

For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats

By JOHN M. BRODER

LOS ANGELES, March 10 — Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.

In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.

She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.

In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats.

But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.

"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.

Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."

Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."

She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."

She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

Her views caught the ear of the American Jewish Congress, which has invited her to speak in May at a conference in Israel. "We have been discussing with her the importance of her message and trying to devise the right venue for her to address Jewish leaders," said Neil B. Goldstein, executive director of the organization.

She is probably more welcome in Tel Aviv than she would be in Damascus.

Shortly after the broadcast, clerics in Syria denounced her as an infidel. One said she had done Islam more damage than the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, a wire service reported.

DR. SULTAN is "working on a book that — if it is published — it's going to turn the Islamic world upside down."

"I have reached the point that doesn't allow any U-turn. I have no choice. I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book."

The working title is The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster.

Dr. Sultan grew up in a large traditional Muslim family in Banias, Syria, a small city on the Mediterranean about a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Her father was a grain trader and a devout Muslim, and she followed the faith's strictures into adulthood.

But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.

"They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!'" she said. "At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god."

She and her husband, who now goes by the Americanized name of David, laid plans to leave for the United States. Their visas finally came in 1989, and the Sultans and their two children (they have since had a third) settled in with friends in Cerritos, Calif., a prosperous bedroom community on the edge of Los Angeles County.

After a succession of jobs and struggles with language, Dr. Sultan has completed her American medical licensing, with the exception of a hospital residency program, which she hopes to do within a year. David operates an automotive-smog-check station. They bought a home in the Los Angeles area and put their children through local public schools. All are now American citizens.

BUT even as she settled into a comfortable middle-class American life, Dr. Sultan's anger burned within. She took to writing, first for herself, then for an Islamic reform Web site called Annaqed (The Critic), run by a Syrian expatriate in Phoenix.
An angry essay on that site by Dr. Sultan about the Muslim Brotherhood caught the attention of Al Jazeera, which invited her to debate an Algerian cleric on the air last July.

In the debate, she questioned the religious teachings that prompt young people to commit suicide in the name of God. "Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?" she asked. "In our countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched."

Her remarks set off debates around the globe and her name began appearing in Arabic newspapers and Web sites. But her fame grew exponentially when she appeared on Al Jazeera again on Feb. 21, an appearance that was translated and widely distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, known as Memri.

Memri said the clip of her February appearance had been viewed more than a million times.

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations," Dr. Sultan said. "It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."

She said she no longer practiced Islam. "I am a secular human being," she said.
The other guest on the program, identified as an Egyptian professor of religious studies, Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, "Are you a heretic?"

He then said there was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.

Dr. Sultan said she took those words as a formal fatwa, a religious condemnation. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her answering machine and by e-mail.

One message said: "Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see." She received an e-mail message the other day, in Arabic, that said, "If someone were to kill you, it would be me."

Dr. Sultan said her mother, who still lives in Syria, is afraid to contact her directly, speaking only through a sister who lives in Qatar. She said she worried more about the safety of family members here and in Syria than she did for her own.

"I have no fear," she said. "I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles."

The Test

Keep your eye on this:

U.S. Backs Afghan Man Who Converted to Christianity

Tuesday, March 21, 2006
(Foxnews)

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration issued a subdued appeal Tuesday to Afghanistan to permit a Christian convert on trial for his life to practice his faith in the predominantly Muslim country.

The State Department, however, did not urge the U.S. ally in the war against terrorism to terminate the trial. Officials said the Bush administration did not want to interfere with Afghanistan's sovereignty.

The case involves an Afghan man who converted from Islam and was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian. The conversion is a crime under Afghanistan's Islamic laws.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and department spokesman Sean McCormack asked Afghanistan to conduct the trial "in a transparent way." Burns said he told Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, with whom he held talks at the department, that "we would follow the case closely."

At a joint news conference, pressed by reporters, Abdullah said he hoped "through our constitutional process there will be a satisfactory result." He did not say whether the defendant, Abdul Rahman, 41, would be found innocent.

Abdullah said officials of his government "know that it is a very sensitive issue and we know the concerns of the American people." He said the Afghan Embassy in Washington had received hundreds of messages of concern.The Bush administration went to war four years ago, ousting the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan, and then joined with other countries to help steer the nation to constitutional rule. About 18,000 U.S. troops are on duty there, and more than 200 have died.

"Our government is a great supporter of freedom of religion," Burns said. "As the Afghan constitution affords freedom of religion to all Afghan citizens, we hope very much that those rights, the right of freedom of religion, will be upheld in an Afghan court."
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., released a letter he said he had sent to Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressing dismay over the case.

"In a country where soldiers from all faiths, including Christianity, are dying in defense of your government, I find it outrageous that Mr. Rahman is being prosecuted and facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity, which he did 16 years ago before your government even existed," Lantos wrote.

German and Italian officials have voiced concern, too.

State Department spokesman McCormack contrasted the government in Kabul with its fundamentalist predecessor.

"Under the Taliban, anybody considered an apostate was subject to torture and death," he said. "Right now, you have a legal proceeding that is under way in Afghanistan."

McCormack said the administration underscored to Abdullah "that we believe tolerance and freedom of worship are important elements of any democracy."

Follow Up

Okay, seriously, regarding the dropping of charges against Mrs. Lafave (in one county):

Republicus was not in the courtroom and for all he knows the law was impeccably satisfied.

However, assuming it is what it appears to be, the question he has is:

Is Justice--The Law-- blind?

Or is it, in fact, wide-eyed and sexist (and racist, and/or influenced by money, etc.)?

Is This The Face Of A Criminal?

Tuesday, March 21, 2006
By Catherine Donaldson-Evans
(Foxnews)

OCALA, Fla. — Charges against a Tampa teacher who had sex with a 14-year-old middle-school student have been dropped in one of the two counties where the incidents occurred.

Note by Republicus:

Okay, it's like this. In all seriousness...

lol

Aw, sheesh, fergit it.

The Star-Spangled Banner Unplugged

"Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?" F.S.K.

The Defence of Fort M'Henry

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wiped out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Francis Scott Key

Superman Returns

Batman has begun again.

There's a new Bond.

And Superman returns.

Unlike the former two, the first movie of the new Superman franchise does not go back to the beginning in an origin story but has the hero returning to earth after an absence (the producing powers-that-be presumably reckoned that the younger audience is already privy to and has been sufficiently primed to Superman's origins after years of watching the television series Smallville to warrant an introductory in medias res of sorts).

Brandon Routh takes up the mantle of the Man of Steel, Kate Bosworth is Lois Lane, and Kevin Spacey is Lex Luthor in Superman Returns.

In theaters everywhere June 30.

(American mythology is alive and well)

First Day of Spring.

Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple-Pie, And...Beer?

Mmmmmm...Beer.

Homer Simpson

In the commentary section of the last post, Republicus assured Kelly that his chugging of tankards of heady green beer and his horizontal rowing of the elbows while ho-ho-ho-ing and his stumbling, slipping, sliding, and ka-splattering attempts at performing nimble step-dancing jigs on St. Patrick's Day were the "Patrickotic" (patriotic, get it? Yeah, ha ha) thing to do.

Indeed, what does an indisputable American patriot and arbiter of early American values--and virtues-- have to say about fermented barley?

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Benjamin Franklin

Yes. And speaking of the Greeks and Irish (as mentioned in the spoofing March 17 "Happy Saint Patrick's Day!" post), what do you get, after all, when you cross a Baltimore brewery, an ancient Greek bard of wine, women, and song, and an Irish poet?

You get the National Anthem of the United States of America!

"What?" you ask, "Is Republicus still drunk?"

Heavens, no!

To wit:

During the War of 1812 (which went on for a couple of years after 1812), Baltimore seamstress Mary Pickersgill was commissioned to make a flag for Fort McHenry (in 1813).

Her house, however, was not large enough for what would be a 42' by 30' flag, and Mrs. Pickersgill asked for permission to assemble the material on the spacious floor of a neighboring establishment after business-hours.

And thus the Star-Spangled Banner itself was born, but not in a Town Hall, or church, or even a farmhouse.

It was birthed in a brewery.

But wait, there's more!

That flag was delivered to General Armistead at Fort McHenry on August 19, 1813, where it was raised high in full view to greet the inevitable arrival of the British armada.

By the next year, on August 24, 1814, the British army invaded Washington and set fire to the city, torching the White House, the Capital Building, and the environs.

President James Madison, First Lady Dolley, and the cabinet were on the run as the city was set ablaze.

The flames could be seen from Baltimore.

But lo! Behold a definitive Act of God with a timing that could only make one wonder about the ways of Providence, Intelligent Design, and America's special place in it:

Just when it seemed that the Revolutionary War was not won, after all, but was merely Round One in a bout that was to end in a K.O. for the United States in a scorcher of Round Two that was the War of 1812, the weather suddenly changed:

It began to rain, and rain hard.

It became a torrential downpour, and the fires were put out.

Then came the lightning and thunder.

Lots of it. The kind that rips apart the sky and makes you flinch, and feel fear.

There was a guardian angel watching over the city, it appeared, and it must have been the apotheosized lightning-wielder Ben Franklin himself telling them to get out.

In case they couldn't take the hint, a tornado appeared.

In Washinton D.C.

During an invasion.

And before they could come near to fully carrying out a scorched-earth policy, they panicked, and got out.

That's Old Testament stuff, ladies and gentleman.

It's also American History.

The gods watch over fools, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.

Otto Von Bismarck

Onwards to Baltimore.

The British armada filled its opponents with dread. It had a rocket vessel named Erebus (named after the dark region of the underworld the dead had to pass before reaching Hades), and bomb vessels named Terror, Volcano, Meteor, Devastation, and Aetna.

On September 13, the fearless and widely-feared armada sighted Fort McHenry, and saw the flag waving over it defiantly.

It could just as well had been a giant, red, white, & blue middle finger reminding them that every word written in the Declaration of Independence was bloody-well meant.

Right. Commence firing, lads.

And a ferocious cannonading was directed at the fort that lasted through the night, determined to wipe the red and blue off that flag and just leave it a white one in the morning.

Shocked and awed by the rockets red glare and the bombs bursting in air, 35-year-old Irish-American Georgetown lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key saw it all from offshore on a British ship (where he was appealing for the release of a prisoner), and he penned in anapestic tetrameter what would become the United States of America's National Anthem (made official by Congress in 1931--after it was already made the anthem of the army and navy).

Key wrote a note on one of the two extant copies: "To be sung to the tune of 'Anacreon in Heaven.'"

Anacreon was an ancient Greek who is on the canonical list of nine lyric poets.

The melody of "Anacreon in Heaven" (and now of the National Anthem) was first published in England ca. 1780, probably written by British composer John Stafford Smith. The lyrics were certainly written by Ralph Tomlinson.

Both were members of the Anacreontic Club of London, and "To Anacreon in Heaven" was their theme song.

The Anacreontic Club was comprised of a group of wealthy men who met to celebrate music, food and drink.

i.e. Epicurianism/Hedonism.

The poetry of Anacreon itself emphasized love, revelry, and drinking.

i.e. Epicurianism/Hedonism.

Yes, good people, the tune of the American National Anthem is the very same as that of what was popularly known as a (British!) drinking song that celebrated hedonism!

Is it any wonder that Wahabbists in places like alcohol-banned Saudi Arabia view the alcohol-friendly--if not engendered-- United States (and now their ally, Britain) as decadent and/or wicked?

To them, Republicus can only, once again, quote this:

Mmmmmm...Beer.

Homer Simpson

Cheers.