A villainous and most evil bird.

From out of nowhere he comes, descending like a black plague upon unsuspecting travelers, squawking a threat and challenge to any and all who displease him. Attacking innocents for the pure joy of knowing his presence strikes stark, stupefying fear into the hearts of his targets, this Cthulhuian apparition haunts the nightmares of many a Midwesterner who has had the misfortune of coming face to beak with him – and lived to tell the tale.

Like something out of an H.P. Lovecraft story, this nameless horror is apt to drive one insane if they were to grasp the true, evil nature of its presence here on earth. For it is nothing less than a journey into the mind of the devil – a reflection seen in its lifeless, beady eyes – that drives the creature in its hate and bloodlust to ambush and terrorize its victims.

I am referring, of course, to the Red Winged Blackbird.

There’s a predator lurking in Chicago-area bushes these days. He strikes from behind, when victims are least aware. And the worst part, says ornithologist Doug Stotz: He could be almost anywhere.

Nesting season is in full swing for the red-winged blackbird, making the males extremely aggressive. Walk or bike too close to one’s nest and expect to hear its high, menacing squawk overhead. Then comes the peck-peck-peck on your head, victims say, or claws rustling your hair.

It happened to Holly Grosso. The businesswoman was on her cell phone, walking along West Grand Avenue near Rockwell Street on Wednesday, when the bird—dubbed “Hitchcock” by area workers—made its move.

“Something just came down, pecked me in the head, took my hair and started flying away,” she said. “It’s so bizarre. It’s this little bird.”

This “little bird” is a demon, a harbinger of hell whose attacks on human beings out for a walk or bike ride foreshadow a time when all the non-human entities that inhabit the earth will turn on their erstwhile masters and sweep the planet of our presence.

Alfred Hitchcock may have been having some fun at our expense when he made the film The Birds. But after a couple of run ins with this avian Satan, you will start believing the great director was a prophet rather than an entertainer.

It isn’t just that these birds swoop down and annoy you. Seagulls have been known to do this. And a few other birds – Blue Jays come to mind – don’t like humans very much and will dive bomb an unsuspecting walker now and again.

But when the Red Winged Blackbird attacks, he is out for blood. He will sit on his perch and may – not always – give a couple of warning honks as you approach. Woe betide the luckless walker or rider who ignores the message. The second you pass his nest and your back is to him, the cowardly creature will alight from his perch and make a beeline straight for your head. Just before you feel his beak nipping at your ear, a bloodcurdling sqauwk pierces your eardrum and the “fight or flee” reflex is automatically triggered. And since you cannot fight a beast circling and diving 20 feet over your head, you begin to run.

It is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen in the animal kingdom. Despite the fact that you are 50 yards from its nest, the Devil Bird continues its attacks, enjoying the fact that he is terrorizing you, gleaning great satisfaction no doubt as he hears your whimpering entreaties to the Almighty, begging for relief.

You can scream at it, wave your hands, shake your fist, even throw a rock at it and the damn thing just keeps coming – a pitiless, relentless force of pure avian evil. What is so disconcerting about the attack is that at one point, you realize you are about 150 times bigger than the little sh*t and that if the wretched, filthy thing stood still for just a second you’d punch its lights out – permanently – and feed the remains to your cat.

I used to walk to work years ago and every day was like enduring a Native American gauntlet. There were at least a half dozen places along my route where I had to be on constant guard against these sudden, brutal attacks. I would cross the highway to avoid the Blackbird hot spots when I could but there were a couple of places where that simply wasn’t pracitical. I took to carrying a rolled up newspaper but it did little good. The gargoyles easily evaded my pitiful attempts to ward them off.

Anyone who says birds aren’t intelligent need only observe the behavior of these maleovolant entities in order to grasp the diabolical way their peanut sized brains work. I figured out that if you look at them while you pass (sometimes you couldn’t see them as they would be hidden by the trees or bushes), all they do is squawk irritably at you. Of course, this means you have to walk backwards once you pass them – a practice that caused more than one motorist on the highway I’m sure to question what insane asylum I had escaped from.

More than once, I would walk backwards 20 or 30 yards past their perch. But the second I turned around it was party time for the bird as his gonzo attack would be more vicious than ever. The damn thing was probably annoyed I had gotten so far away from his clutches.

Now I’m all for conservation and everything. Save the whales, don’t club baby seals (unless they truly deserve it), only cut down first growth timber if you’re going to make my oak dining room table and please, whatever you do, leave a few large mouth bass in the stream for the rest of us.

But even my love of nature can’t stop the evil thoughts about what I think should be done with every Red Winged Blackbird in North America.

Watching the cable nets talk about the death of Tim Russert at age 58 – and they are all on the story – you are struck by the sheer number of journalists and on air personalities whose professional lives had been touched by this man.

Tom Brokaw put it well with his typical understatement:

He was “one of the premier political journalists and analysts of his time,” Tom Brokaw, the former longtime anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” said in announcing Russert’s death. “This news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice.”

But Russert will be known for his combative yet polite interview techniques that had the effect of breaking down a target into a quivering hunk of jello while boring in and, with bulldog tenacity, not letting go until a particular question was answered. He would ask the same question a half dozen times until he was satisfied that he had at least a partial answer to his question.

The list of honors is impressive:

Russert’s March 2000 interview of Sen. John McCain shared the 2001 Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence in Television Journalism. He was also the recipient of the John Peter Zenger Award, the American Legion Journalism Award, the Veterans of Foreign Wars News Media Award, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society Journalism Award, the Allen H. Neuharth Award for Excellence in Journalism, the David Brinkley Award for Excellence in Communication and the Catholic Academy for Communication’s Gabriel Award. He was a member of the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame.

Some may find bias in the way he interviewed conservatives compared to his interviews with liberals. But I didn’t see it. His job was to ask questions and get answers. And few in the business were so relentless in pursuit of answers be they Democrats or Republicans. There was no such thing as a softball interview where Russert was concerned.

According to people who knew him, he was extremely well informed, spending hours every morning scanning the wires and news reports so that he was up to speed with what was going on. Speaking from experience, I can tell you it is no easy task. I might spend 3-4 hours before sitting down to write anything reading MSM coverage as well as blogs. Russert spent that amount of time and more just so that he could do his job.

A life cut short – a well lived life. We mourn the passing of someone and will miss the spice he brought to political journalism.

June 1, 1944

Former presidential friend and aide Harry Hopkins says in a new book that President Roosevelt “misled” the people of the United States about the war and has carried on an intimate relationship with another woman for many years.

Those are just two of the shocking revelations contained in What Actually Happened which goes on sale next week at bookstores. Hopkins, whose public falling out with Roosevelt last year made headlines, said he had to write the book because his conscience was bothering him and that reflecting on his tenure at the White House made him see the error of his ways.

Among the surprises in the book:

• Roosevelt misled the American people about the extent of damage done to our Pacific fleet on December 7 – a cover up that continues to this day. Hopkins didn’t give the exact number of ships damaged or sunk but he said it was “considerably more” than FDR let on and that casualties were in “the thousands.”

• The former friend also accuses Roosevelt of ignoring intelligence that pointed to an attack on Pearl Harbor. “Roosevelt had in his possession certain intercepted communications that proved the Japanese were about to strike,” writes Hopkins. But Roosevelt’s arrogance prevented him from seeing the truth, says the author.

• Hopkins also accused the President of failing to save the Philippines from falling into Japanese hands by not resupplying Corrigedor and allowing Bataan to fall without an effort to save it. “The fact is,” writes Hopkins, “There were plans that, if implemented, could have rescued the Philippines while saving our men on Bataan from the cruelty of the Death March.”

• The former aide also accused Roosevelt of incompetence at the Battle of Anzio. The president’s stubborn insistence on the landing despite knowledge of German strength in area as well as his continued belief in the capabilities of General Lucas led to a bloody, unnecessary stalemate.

• Hopkins also wrote that FDR deferred much too often to British PM Churchill and that by doing so, forced the US into premature action on several fronts.

• The most explosive revelation in the book has to do with a mistress the president is allegedly have kept for many years. Hopkins did not name the woman but said she visits the White House when Eleanor is out of town and has been to the Warm Springs resort several times as well.

• Hopkins called FDR “vindictive” and was someone who carried a grudge. This image is at odds with Roosevelt’s public demeanor of being even tempered and a happy, well adjusted man.

Hopkins has promised to donate some of the proceeds he receives from the book to the widows and orphans of Pearl Harbor…

I am taking it easy this weekend – relatively speaking – and preparing for a series of posts on “What Ails Conservatism?”

Those readers who have followed this blog for a while know of my interest in this subject. I have posts going all the way back to 2005 talking about the coming conservative collapse and was at a loss at what to do about it. But each time I wrote about the state of conservatism, things crystallized in my mind about not just the diagnosis but also other tangents relating to the problem so that now, I feel energized enough to spend a considerable amount of time and thought in explaining my thinking.

The energy comes from George Packer’s New Yorker essay on the “Fall of Conservatism” which is still echoing around the blogs. In fact, it was this laughably shallow piece at Firedoglake that got me thinking about writing a series of blog posts on Packer’s thesis. I thought I could do a much better job than this fellow if only because 1) my vocabulary allows me to get through an entire post without once using the word “f*ck; and 2) I am not a half-crazed, obscenity spewing, ignoramus who missed the point of Packer’s essay and substituted a thesis of dubious logic and intellectually incoherent arm chair psychology for reasoned analysis.

I happen to agree with much of what Packer said in his piece which I didn’t get to read in its entirety until this morning. Alas, that’s one of the things I miss now that I am actually working as a writer/editor. I barely have enough time to put something on my own site everyday and reading 7,000 word essays while taking the time to write a response just isn’t in the cards anymore.

So instead of trying to get it down all in one day, I will take my time and try something a little different; examine individual issues raised by Packer (and other commenters both liberal and conservative) in order to perhaps glean some essential truth that may end up being unique. We know pretty much what’’s wrong with the ideology of conservatism. But what of the philosophy that is its underpinning? And what of the future.

I hope you will join me for what promises to be a stimulating journey.

Back in the saddle after a most uneventful move from Algonquin to Streator. Sue’s 3 year old granddaughter got sick on the trip over here and the poor kid was up most of the night. Two changes of bedding and clothing later, my Zsu-Zsu has pronounced the house “christened.”

My new office is groovy. It’s kewl. It’s like, to die for. Roomy and quiet, I have a Lazy Boy set up in the corner next to the book cases with an antique floor lamp for my reading.

I will never buy another non-wireless keyboard and mouse. They are a joy to use and recommend them to anyone who needs a new one. And my new headphones are the bomb – extraordinary sound quality plus the cord is a lot longer so that I can use them while sitting in my chair.

As for the house itself (I had not seen it decorated) all I can say is that Sue did a fine job but that some adjustments are definitely in order. Entirely too much lacy and frilly stuff like curtains and furniture coverings. I will work my manly wiles on her (essentially throwing a tantrum while acting like a 4 year old little boy) and get some of the more egregious stuff changed.

One sour note; our 50” Viszio TV. The non-HD picture is an abomination. Joe tells me that it’s because the TV is set to display a picture in 1081 lines (1081i) but the stations are broadcasting in 480i which means the TV compensates by essentially stretching the image more than twice as far as it is meant to be.

Until all stations go digital next year, he says that our picture quality will remain an issue. Part of the problem may be solved when we call in the Geek Squad to adjust the TV. My reading about HDTV’s convinced me that getting someone to come out and fiddle with the settings so that we get the optimum picture at the number of feet we are away from the screen will be worth the $300 or so it will cost.

But the HD picture is drop dead gorgeous. Coupled with our new Bose 3-2-1-GS Series Home Theater System, it’s all one can hope for in a movie viewing experience.

Anyway, we’re here in Streator – home sweet home. Be back to regular blogging tomorrow.

Sue and I are pulling up stakes today and moving from Algonquin, IL, our home of 5 years (and my home for 15 years), and moving downstate a ways to Streator, IL - a quiet town on the Vermilion River that began 130 years ago as a coal town. Streator today is a typical small town with a mix of industry and merchants – a sleepy, Midwestern rural metropolis that caters to area farmers as well townsfolk.

We will be twice as far from Chicago as we are now which is really no big deal because my trips to the big city have been infrequent lately. It just feels like its not really in the mainstream because the area around Streator is much more agricultural than Algonquin – a village that has grown from around 7500 when I first arrived to over 30,000 today. The open spaces around Algonquin are filling up very rapidly so it will be nice to get out into the country again – the reason I moved to Algonquin all those years ago.

I have many pleasant memories of Algonquin; fishing in the early morning with the sun coming up over the bluffs; boating on the lazy, meandering Fox River. It will be something of a shock to get out on the Vermilion river which features several stretches of Class II and III rapids – not that I would try that in a thousand years. Barbecues at sunset, friends who have come and gone, and, of course, meeting and falling in love with my Zsu-Zsu – the best thing that has happened to me in my 54 years on this earth.

Everything is much cheaper in Streator which will be important in these uncertain economic times. Sue and I plan to purchase a couple of bicycles and take them to 2 nearby state parks for some scenic riding. We have a full acre and a half (note to self: find some kid who likes to mow lawns.), a big fenced in back yard, with some fruit trees – peaches, pears, and plums. The house itself is a 3-bedroom ranch with an unfinished basement that we are going to turn into a family room. Not quite a dream house but a nice, comfortable place to live.

I will not be back blogging until Sunday at the earliest and probably not until Monday. I am taking the opportunity that comes with the move to retool my computer; new keyboard and mouse, new hard drive, a better sound card, and new, very expensive, very pretty headphones. We bought new furniture, a new 50” HDTV, a Bose sound system, and a new VCR-DVD machine – all paid for in cash, I might add.

You can imagine my stress level today. But Sue is doing her usual best to keep me relatively calm and has planned the move very well – so far anyway. I’ll let you know how everything turned out later.

My association with American Thinker began more than three  years ago when, as someone who decided at mid-life to change careers and try to write for a living, I saw an opportunity to promote my writing on a respected conservative website and submitted a piece for publication.

Little did I know that a very rewarding and productive relationship would result from that submission.

Through the years, AT Editor in Chief Tom Lifson has been a combination mentor, muse, and friend. I don’t think I would be writing today and making a living as a writer if Tom Lifson hadn’t  encouraged me, needled me at times, and been a sounding board for my ideas.

Now as Associate Editor, I have a somewhat more personal stake in this enterprise. So I would like to ask that you give generously to our fund raising efforts. The money we bring in will be used to make this site an even more valuable resource for news, information, and the examination of provocative ideas.

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Again, thank you for your past support of this site and its authors. Please give generously so that we can continue to grow and become an even larger positive force for the conservative movement in the future. You can pay by using this secure credit card donation service via PayPal. Or you can send a check to:

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I am pleased to announce that I have signed on as the Chicago Editor for Pajamas Media effective next Monday.

My association with PJM goes back to the beginning when I signed on to accept advertising on my site under their rubric. Then last year, Roger Simon, CEO of Pajamas, asked me to write for the site – an opportunity I relish to this day.

Now, I’ll be even more closely associated with this growing and changing concern. I look forward to a happy and productive collaboration with the good folks there and hope you stop by a couple of times a day to see what’s new. The site is undergoing a major redesign with some exciting things on tap for the future. It will truly be a unique opportunity for me to work for a company on the cutting edge of the revolution in blogs and news dissemination.

Sorry about not posting anything today. I have been wrestling with a post on our national (non) conversation about race, trying not to be too “resentful” toward African Americans while avoiding the trap of “tribalism” that Glenn Greenwald tells me that I can’t help falling into because I’m a resentful, racist conservative – unless, of course, I accept his idea of how this here national conversation on race is supposed to go.

Truth is, I’m just burned out. Now I know why God rested on the 7th day; even He needed to catch up on His sleep and not have to think about creating anything for a day.

There have been precious few days off these last 9 months or so and it’s beginning to take its toll. It’s been years since I preferred sleeping in the morning to getting online. I’ll try getting to bed earlier tonight and see if that rejuvenates me a little.

Noted Media Critic for the Washington Post Howard Kurtz was kind enough to link me in his column today on blogger react to Obama’s speech.

That’s where Mr. Kurtz’s kindness ended.

Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse likes the style but not the substance:

Interesting parallel, no?

Interesting? I suppose it’s interesting in the same way that watching a naked Howard Kurtz being tied up and whipped by some leather clad Dominatrix with Swastikas as pasties while ordering him to beg for his mommy is interesting.

But a “parallel” to the Obama-Wright situation?

Only if you believe I am the Reverend Wright and my brother is Obama in Howies little moral equivalence parable.

First of all, I can state categorically that my brother Terry bears little resemblance to Barack Obama. Wait…I take that back. They’re both from Illinois. They’re both tall and handsome. Beyond that, Terry is honest, forthright, regular in his affairs, doesn’t associate with criminals, bigots, racists, or terrorists, and is married to a smart, sweet, gorgeous, American-loving woman.

Obama? Not so much.

As for a comparison of me and Reverend Wright? We’re both tending toward the gut, have greying hair, and have loud, obnoxious voices. Beyond that, Wright is an anti-white, anti-Semitic, conspiracy mongering, race baiting, unity destroying anti-American, Christian preacher.

Somebody get Howie a pair of glasses. And half a brain if one can be found.

For the record: Anybody who would equate my brother’s defense of me – my own blood standing up for me – with Obama not throwing his bigoted preacher and spiritual advisor (a pastor and church he chose to attend) under the proverbial bus is a goose.

There is no “interesting parallel” between Obama-Wright and Moran-Moran. It was silly, stupid, and monumentally insulting for Kurtz to make such a comparison – even in jest (which it wasn’t). If Kurtz is shallow enough to equate conservatism with Wright’s sneering hatred then he has no business commenting on politics – something many from both the left and the right have pointed out prior to me.

If this were 200 year ago, I would more than likely have appointed my second already and gone for my daddy’s dueling pistols. But since we are limited here in the 21st century to firing verbal and blogospheric darts, I guess I’ll just have to settle.