This columnist has often wondered why it is that every time al Qaeda opens its collective mouth with murderous taunts and threats against Americans that more of us don't react in kind.
Apart from New York City firefighter Michael Moran, who walked onto the stage of the post-9/11 benefit Concert for New York and told Osama bin Laden to "kiss my royal Irish ass," the majority of us have chosen to go about our daily lives and ignore the terrorists' menacing barrage of forebodings.
Now I'm beginning to understand why.
Washington pundit Diana West, a fellow columnist at The Washington Times, among other publications, just wrote "The Death of the Grown-Up," which wonders whether American adults — President Bush included — will ever grow up?
"No wonder we can't stop Islamic terrorism," writes the author, suggesting that since the late 1960s, America's "youth-obsessed" culture — from guitar-playing baby boomers to Generation X-ers — has multiplied at the expense of reason, decency and good taste, leaving us with a nation of "eternal adolescents," and generation of permissive parents, teachers and government officials.
"We can look to the thick, blanketing fog of political correctness that hangs over the political landscape, shrouding difference, obscuring significance, and clouding debate. But something besides what we know as 'PC' plays into the resulting hush," Ms. West writes.
"The uniformity of the silence, from Left to Right, from academia to politics to journalism, tells us we have moved beyond PC to a more profound, more enveloping level of orthodoxy."
Even when fighting an escalating terrorism threat that already has so dramatically changed our lives.
"Example: When, in the shell-shocked wake of 9/11, President Bush began his historically inaccurate and theologically absurd 'Islam is peace' offensive [-] which to this day relies on a willful ignorance of the johad ideology that has driven Islamic history for thirteen centuries [-] no voices of correction, no attempts at historical analysis coalesced into a school of thought that was admitted into the political mainstream, not even among pro-war, anti-PC conservatives.
"Ultimately, I came to understand this as a post-adult moment because it felt as if no grown-ups were speaking up; indeed, it became alarmingly clear that there were no grown-ups to speak up."
How'd they do that?
How did the White House manage to keep yesterday's surprise presidential visit to Iraq's Anbar province shrouded in secrecy?
President Bush's third trip to Iraq since the start of the war "was a tightly held secret" planned for about six weeks, or so we read in the White House pool report.
Washington-based reporters who accompanied the president to Iraq were only telephoned over the Labor Day weekend and summoned for "individual, face-to-face" meetings at the White House, and were informed they would not make a Monday-morning trip to Australia "as had been publicly announced, but Sunday between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m. Reporters were given maps of Andrews [Air Force Base] with our rallying point highlighted," we read.
As for Mr. Bush, he "slipped out of a side door of the White House and then off the White House grounds" in what was a rare, two-car motorcade "in an effort to keep the subterfuge going."
Natal intelligence
Every day, all sorts of people with assorted messages write to the president of the United States, astrologers included.
"Mr. Bush, I just warned you last week not to travel during this time," one star reader named "Sven" wrote to George W. Bush yesterday after learning of the president's surprise visit to war-torn Iraq. "We just had an eclipse that fell on your Progressed Ruler (Mercury) and conjuncted the USA chart's Progressed Sun. Saturn is conjunct Regulus (the "King Maker"/"King Breaker" Star), and tomorrow it intercepts your Sun/Moon midpoint, which are in SQUARE to one another in your natal chart ...
"Trust me: I am America's greatest living astrologer. These are all BAD OMENS. You should lay low for at least another month after that eclipse ... I hope you're OK. Please be careful."
Jews for Obama
Jews for Obama, a blog for Jewish supporters of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president in 2008, asks readers to show their support in style with red, white and blue "Obama-kahs" skullcaps, or yarmulkes.
Mr. Obama's volunteers in New York City created the Jewish skullcaps, also called kippot.
"The yarmulkes are professionally made of ivory white suede, with 'Obama '08' printed in blue, and the campaign's logo directly above the text," the blog notes. "Please help us spread the word about their availability by reaching out to your friends at your synagogue (or your classmates at your local college's Hillel) and to any other Jews you know who support Senator Obama, and point them to our website: www.jewsforobama .blogspot.com."