Lucille Ball

This past week, White House spokesman Josh Earnest admitted that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism who kill Americans. But, he continued, it would be unrealistic to expect the Iranian regime to give up terrorism.

This statement was in defense of Obama’s continuing appeasement of the IslamoNazis of Iran.

In the past, when Americans were murdered by foreign tyrants, American leaders would react with anger and horror. They would move to isolate such totalitarian states. They would try and overthrow these wicked regimes.

But Barack Obama believes that America is the original sin of global instability. If only America would surrender her hegemonic role, then the global community would sort itself out, and America could build a socialist paradise at home.

Of course, the Obama doctrine has set the Middle East on fire. With America’s withdrawal, the Westphalian model of nation states is giving way to classic Islamist imperialism. Death cults, tribalism, and religious sectarianism are quickly erasing national borders, and birthing vast lawless regions where mass murder is the norm, and where hundreds of thousands of non-Muslims are under threat of Islamic genocide.

The only nation state in the region of which Obama clearly disapproves is Israel, the Jewish state, where democracy flourishes, where religious minorities have full equal rights, where homosexuals live openly and without fear, and where women are free of persecution.

But for Barack Obama, Israel is the problem, whereas Iran and Cuba are the solution.

Welcome to the moral inversions of Oceania.

A few pictures to deflect the gathering darkness.

Four studies of Leda by Leonardo Da Vinci. In Greek mythology, the God Zeus transforms himself into a swan and travels to Earth to seduce a lady called Leda. She gives birth to two eggs that hatch to be Polydeuces and Helen. — Four studies of Leda by Leonardo da Vinci. In Greek mythology, the God Zeus transforms himself into a swan and travels to Earth to seduce a a beautiful lady named Leda. She gives birth to Polydeuces and Helen, AKA Helen of Troy. The date of this chalk and ink work is 1506, and executed while Da Vinci lived in Milan. The dimensions are 17.7 x 14.7 cm. The completed “Leda and the Swan”painting is lost.

Years ago, on Shabbos evenings, when our children were little, I would frequently grab an art book, sit in my chair, and one of the kids would climb into my lap. We’d turn the pages, look at the pictures, and make up stories about the figures in the paintings.

Ariel, Z’TL, was intrigued by the Dutch painters of the Seventeenth Century: Jan Steen, Peter de Hooch, Vermeer, and Rembrandt. Offspring #2 and #3, girls, inclined to the High Italian Renaissance: Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo.

One memorable night, I opened a book devoted to the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci.

Offspring #2 was about 5 years old at the time, and after leafing through a few pages, she grew bored. She wanted lush colors, luminous light, and dramatic figures in mysterious landscapes. Leonardo’s drawings were too stark, too black and white. And Leonardo’s anatomy drawings… totally gross.

Then I turned to Leonardo’s four sketches for the head of Leda.

Offspring #2 nearly fell off my lap.

Friday Photos: Drowning in Obama’s Oceania

Hollywood Hair: Leda Styled By Leonardo da Vinci