Obama also had to make amends as much as possible for Bush's aggressive philosophy of preemption, which really amounted to prevenge—getting back at someone he feared might even think about harming our nation before they could act.

[…] add half a pint of cream, four tablespoonfuls of flour, some finely cut almonds, and some lemon-peel grated, or a piece of vanilla pounded[,] with sugar enough to sweeten the auflauf.

[…] but though the mythic hero may thus be made to figure in a moral apologue, an imagination so little in keeping with his unethic nature jars upon the reader's mind.

The present inflation of Catullus into a sort of major poet is no doubt in great part due to Victwardian scholars and their naïve biographical impromptus on the juvenile infatuation the poems record for “Lesbia,” whose real name (a writer 200 years after the event assures us) was Clodia.