Wolf Trap Premieres 'The Inspector'

Read my recent review of the world premiere performance of the new John Musto and Mark Campbell opera, "The Inspector" at Curtain Up!, my review site at the Washington Times Communities. Quite an interesting show.

Slaughter in Syria

Roger Simon introduces a series of videos on Pajamas Media that give true and gruesomely graphic insight into one of the many Middle Eastern thug-ocracies and their repressive, Stalinist-style policies. This time it's Syria, only the latest in the rolling powder-keg of populist revolts in that unfortunate quadrant. Read Simon's intro first, giving his rationale for offering these horrifying film clips, since he also explains how they were obtained and at what potential cost to the filmers.

One of the frustrating things about modern reporting is the fact that we rarely, if ever, get news footage from countries that have proved to be our implacable enemies over the years. Part of this is due to severe censorship on the part of those governments. Part, sadly, is due to the cowardice of the MSM which doesn't want Americans to know that there's real evil out there. (Ruins the moral equivalency argument.) The MSM themselves often obtain this type of footage, but then they sit on it, offering weak-kneed excuses for not airing it. Simon and Pajamas Media are doing a public service by making these videos available. You'll never see them on CNN.

President Obama's response thus far to these unfolding events has been weak-kneed and equivocal. We'd like to think that he's providing cover for American covert ops in various Middle Eastern countries. But given his behavior thus far on these and other matters, including our shameful lack of cooperation with NATO in Libya, I have to wonder if the President is, once again, playing the post-colonial card to improve our "image" with leftist intellectuals abroad. In other words, all these problems were really caused by British-American imperialism and we have no "right" to intervene as people sort out the evil that we caused. It's a disturbing thought.

PJ Media's footage, airing as it is right now, provides a grimly ironic commentary on this Holy Saturday, the day when Christians await the commemoration of the martyred Jesus' rising from the tomb on Easter Sunday. Hopefully, in a secular sense, the Syrian people themselves will soon experience their own resurrection as a country by toppling the Iranian-backed Assad tyranny.

The Return of Sarah Barracuda

Sarah Palin is back, and how. AP reports:

Sarah Palin defended Wisconsin's governor at a tea party tax day rally Saturday, telling hundreds of supporters that his polarizing union rights law is designed to save public jobs.

Of course, the AP then goes on to trash Palin by innuendo and try to slant the story in favor of the lefty union trolls and thugs who inevitably showed up to trash the Tea Partiers. (And note: the AP puts Tea Party in lower case, another one of the hundreds of not-so-subtle, smarmy, casual digs anybody who's not on the left has to endure on almost a daily basis.

Dan Riehl has a little better idea than AP as to what's really going on here. Unlike the "professionals," Riehl has more than a clue as to what this story is really about: leadership.

It's ironic to watch so many so called establishment Republicans who seem to want to be leader of the free world dance their way around the more serious political battles of our time. They criticize, they pontificate, or editorialize, yet from ObamaCare to a budget deal, they're also careful to not too directly engage. The same can be said of them for what has played out in Madison, Wisconsin over the past month.

Whether it's talking about death panels, or blood libel, to now showing up in Madison - that's not former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. As I said to a friend and colleague tonight, wherever the current battle is, that's very often where you can find Palin. One of the first requirements for leadership is to show up out front. No one will ever accuse Palin of not doing that. Doing so also has an interesting side benefit for any would be leader. When you lead, people tend to follow and support you, even if not at first.

Riehl's commentators are interesting, too, although as usual they're invaded by the usual assortment of (probably) paid lefty trolls who trot out the tired blame-Sarah meme--you know, the one where she's a coward and a quitter for resigning as Alaska's governor. Which, as they well know, she did to prevent all the Democrat-supported frivolous lawsuits against her from bankrupting her family--which was their intention.

One commentator ("Judas Priest") runs with this, picking up the cudgels and letting loose the best anti-left diatribe I've seen in months. It's on Riehl's site, but I'm reproducing it in full here to save you some time.

You Liberals are terrified - TERRIFIED OF PALIN. You know full well she didn't abandon her governor seat, she was hit by so many frivolous lawsuits from the Left that she couldn't function as governor and do the will of the people. So cut the crap with your lies!
You want to talk about abandoning? OK, let's have at it - Obama abandoned YOU. And your silence SCREAMS hypocrisy!

GE pays no taxes. Silence from the Left.Obama takes us to war #3. Silence from the Left.
Sarah Palin called a t***. Then a c***. Silence from the feminist Left. Economy in shambles. Silence from the Left.
Foreign policy a disaster. Silence from the Left. Pump prices have doubled under Obama. Silence from the Left.
Food/clothing prices skyrocket. Silence from the Left. Over 30 Czars. Silence from the Left.
Obama loses Democratic party over 700 seats. Silence from the Left. National debt has risen to 1.4% of a Quadrillion dollars. Silence from the Left.
NPR busted in full bias. Silence from the Left. GTMO still open. Silence from the Left.
2 wars still on, one with record death toll. Silence from the Left. All Democrat Congressional and Senate representatives are millionaires, multimillionaires, or billionaires. Silence from the Left.
Obama ignores nuclear disaster now reaching our shores. Silence from the Left. Obama delivers oil rig contract to Soros-owned Petrobas so they can drill for oil in gulf and sell it to us. Silence from the Left.
Hundreds of waivers delivered to Big Corporations and unions for Obamacare exemptions. Silence from the Left.

Palin IS NOT running the country, neither is Bush or Reagan or Beck or Nixon or Limbaugh or the Koch brothers. OBAMA is. And he's doing a damned terrible job of it as his recent 41% approval rating is showing. So go back to HuffPo and tell them you need better talking points. And a better candidate next time. This one and his Liberal policies are Epic Fail. 

I have nothing more to add.

Al Gore: Warmist Jackass

He's ba-a-a-ack! Yes indeedy, Al Gore, aka "The Goracle." America's own Foghorn Leghorn and longtime pretender to the White House has surfaced yet again with the same old self-serving "global warming" rant. Ever notice? Each of Gore's successive media resurrections resemble trailers from those old Hammer films where Dracula constantly rises from the grave they put him in back in the previous film. In any event, The Hill reports:
Al Gore told young green energy advocates Friday that progress on global warming must come from a strong grassroots movement that can counter the oil and coal lobbies, which he alleged have “paralyzed” governments.

Gore – who compared action on global warming to the Civil Rights movement – was the keynote speaker at Power Shift 2011, a Washington, D.C. conference attended largely by college students.

Here's an audience tailor made for this horizontally-challenged warmist buffoon whose undergrad college GPA was actually lower than that of G.W. Bush, the alleged moron who beat Gore and his operatives fair and square in Florida in Y2K. Today's college kids largely learn nothing but the Marxist propaganda they hear in the average college classroom rather than actual useful subject matter.

Gore's agitprop included the following meaningless observation:

“It’s true that governments by and large have been politically paralyzed because the energy companies, the coal companies, the oil companies, the coal-burning utilities, they have spent enormous amounts of money and they have succeeded in many countries in paralyzing the political process,” the former vice president said.

Of course it's also true that the entire Lamestream Media, nearly all Democrats in Congress, and every lefty prof this or that side of the Pecos, plus America's Blatherer-in-Chief are all warmists who are casting a blind eye on the EPA's illegal overregulation of the utility and mining industries, all of which furthers the warmists' ends. Not to mention the ruthless lobbying of the enviro-freaks. I'd say these clowns currently have the upper hand over Gore's whipping boys of the day, the energy company lobbyists, who are ultimately on the side of all Americans who want lower-cost domestically produced energy whenever possible, not higher energy prices extorted by unfriendly regimes and speculators.

Not to be deterred, America's Clown Prince of RICO continues:

“There are four anti-climate lobbyists on Capitol Hill in this city for every single member of the House and every single member of the Senate,” Gore said Friday night at the opening of the April 15-18 conference.

“What is the answer for this?" Gore asked. "It has to come from you. It has to come at the grassroots level. It has to come from young people, and I believe that you are up to it and that you can do it.”

Yep, it has to come from young people. Young people who won't be able to get a job or pay back their horrendous student loans, courtesy of Obama, the Democrats, and the environmentaloids, all of whom seek to cut back on human reproduction by making living itself impossibly expensive. Young people who won't see a dime of Medicare or Social Security if the demagoguing of the Socialist Democrat Party continues unanswered and unchallenged.

Gore retreated for awhile after the East Anglia-led global warming fraud hoax was exposed two years ago. I guess he figures the coast is clear now, so it's time to defend his vast "green" investments again. Let's never forget that Gore has staked his entire economic future on money-losing but taxpayer supported boondoggles subsidizing "alternative energy" projects, none of which will ever generate a dime in unsubsidized profits.

I'm amazed that this blustering, self-righteous, idiot still gets any press coverage at all. Then again, I maybe shouldn't be. After all, it's that same "legitimate media" that anointed "The One," whose presidency is already threatening to dethrone the Carter interregnum as the worst presidency ever. Between Gore and Obama, it's a real contest as to which of these super smarmy politicos is actually the most drippingly condescending to and contemptuous of the average American citizen. I hope a few of these citizens at least will regain their equilibrium and common sense before entering the voting booth in November 2012.

As for Gore. It is increasingly possible that we will never again see a bigger, blowsier, more blissfully buffo bloviator in this century.

Cleveland Orchestra's "Don Giovanni"

Since I'm back in town, I've just now posted my review of the Cleveland Orchestra's marvelous, recently-concluded production of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Check it out here in my column "Curtain Up!" in the Washington Times Communities online.

While your in the neighborhood, check out Politics, another area for which the Washington Times is justly famous. Good stuff here on both sides of the spectrum.