Reagan said “a recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A  depression is when you lose your job”.

Recovery, he continued, was when Jimmy Carter lost his job.  Well, we’ll have to work on that in 2012.  But until then, “recovery” really happens when you, the laid-off American, finally job up and get back to work.

And that is a great moment.  My only really significant period of unemployment in my life – my five months of unemployment and six more of subsistence-level contracting – was punctuated by a sudden burst of intense work at the end of ’03 and the beginning of ’04, as the Bush tax cuts kicked into high gear.  The dotbomb was a fairly short recession (depression, for me), and it ended because the economy, recovering fast, needed people, including me, to be getting the job done.

America is a big, throbbing place that needs people to do stuff.  We have incalculable pent-up demand for everything from bread to Escalades (or Priuses, or whatever) to houses to B-2 bombers.

Of course, companies need to feel that the recovery is solid enough to warrant hiring the people to start building all those Mister Coffees and Target stores and construction bulldozers and flavored condoms and everything else that makes up a consumer and capital market.

And they are, at the moment, not hiring.
And, as my radio pardner Ed points out, that’s the untold, scary story of this recession so far.

Why has this recession generated such bad job opening rates? Isidore quotes Robert Brusca of FAO Economics as saying that “fear is running the show right now,” and small wonder. Instead of trying to calm the nation, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi have transformed themselves into Chicken Littles, abandoning FDR’s “All we have to fear is fear itself” in favor of “We’re all going to DIE!” Why? Their stimulus package keeps losing support, and only fear can propel it to passage, but that same hysteria has employers locking their doors, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of economic doom.

Look, even if you leave party identification out of it – don’t bother with “Republican” or “Democrat” labels for now – we need a “Ronald-Reagan”-type personality in this nation to reassure people that the end is not near, that the sun will come up tomorrow, that best thing to do with wolves at the door is go outside and shoot them, tan their hides, and make a fortune on wolf-skin wallets.

Barack Obama, to date, is not that person.

Question for all you Obama supporters; do you think Pelosi, Reid and Frank will allow it?

E. J. Dionne on the leftymedia’s approach to all of us uppity peasants who are rooting for the GOP’s red-zone play:

Obama’s network appearances were planned as a response to a wholly unanticipated development: Republicans — short on new ideas, low on votes, and deeply unpopular in the polls — have been winning the media wars over the president’s central initiative. They have done so largely by focusing on minor bits of the stimulus that amount, as Obama said in at least two of his network interviews, to “less than 1 percent of the overall package.” But Republicans have succeeded in defining the proposal by its least significant parts.

The fact that the “stimulus” would “stimulate” more if it were paid directly to the people in cash -that it creates a tiny film of jobs, mostly for Democrat constituencies, in exchange for a ruinous avalanche of pork – is the “least significant part?”

Heather Cromar responds:

Just imagine for a moment if my two daughters took my credit card on a spending spree of their own and came back with a whopping $80, 000 bill. Now try to imagine that the little sister, who flat out opposed the whole nonsense, in complaining to me about it, happened to mention that the older sister had bought some items that were sure to make my hair stand on end the moment I found out about it. Which would be the bigger issue to me? The couple of no-nos, or the total bill that is going to set our family budget back by a considerable amount for decades?

The thing to remember as you watch the media rally, legs a-tingle, around The One; they need you to be stupid.

Five years ago, former Marine General Anthony Zinni became every liberal’s favorite general (also the only general they could name) when he came out against the Bush Administration’s strategery in Iraq.

You knew there had to be limits.  Ed Morrissey writes:

When General Anthony Zinni publicly criticized the Iraq War, he became a darling of the Left. Now that the Iraq War has all but ended in victory, he’s apparently dispensable. Zinni had been offered the position of Ambassador to Iraq, accepted it, and had even received a congratulatory phone call from Barack Obama. While he made arrangements to live in Iraq, though, Obama and Hillary Clinton changed their minds — and never bothered to tell him:

And why?

…So what happened to the man Democrats used repeatedly to bolster their efforts to undermine George Bush’s efforts in Iraq? Zinni works for a company that does a lot of business in Iraq, and supposedly the Obama administration worried about how that would look in a confirmation hearing. Another source told FP that the Obama team worried about the optics of sending two former generals as ambassadors to Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously.

However, neither of those explanations make much sense. Given how hard Obama fought to keep Tom Daschle and his $5 million worth of work for the industry he would soon regulate, the Dyncorp position would have been hardly a burp in a Democratic-controlled Senate. Obama’s appointed 12 lobbyists to key positions already, and an ambassadorship even to a key post like Iraq wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. And who cares whether one general or two becomes Ambassador to war theaters?

Rumor also had it that Zinni had his taxes all paid up.

Let me get this straight – Bush was the dumb, fumbly one?

I’ve created a bit of a mathematical law, derived from observing liberals.

When they’re quoting numbers (except for spending figures), divide by an order of magnitude.  Maybe two.  Maaaaaybe more.

For example:  the Million Man March?  That was a bit of an outlier:  according to the Park Service, you needed to divide that by a trifling 2.5.

The Million Mom March?  An order up front, a little over two today.

Nancy Pelosi’s joblessness estimate?

Look – I understand flubs.  Even though Barack Obama went to Harvard (and thus only needs to really know three or four states for real) I’m pretty sure he knows there are fifty states.

Although it’d be fun to quiz him on near-eastern and Central Asian languages; d’ya suppose Charlie Gibson is available?

Preserving (also instituting) the constitutional rights of non-American-citizens caught in action against America were a key part of the Obama campaign.
Now that they’re in charge and actually have to deal with terrorists?

Not quite:

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the United States is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

“Obviously you need to preserve some tools — you still have to go after the bad guys,” said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. “The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”

“controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe”?  Yes – the circles that got President Obama elected, at least in part over the collective vapors because Europe didn’t heart us anymore!

One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA’s secret prison sites “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”

Despite concern about rendition, Obama’s prohibition of many other counter-terrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the “transitory” technique.

Well, I’m sure Chris Matthews will be all over this one.

From a local email politics “discussion” group that’s been locked in a DFL-upsucking stranglehold for a decade or so, writing about the “stimulus”:

Here we have a potential doubling of the national debt over a span of months to years and here is as much transparency as the run up to the Wars in both Vietnam and Iraq.  There is as much transparency as Medicare Part D.

That is a truly pathetic level of disclosure in a democracy and the direct product of partisans.

That’s a liberal writing.

One guy with enough brains to read past the hagiographic hype isn’t a trend, of course.

But it’s a sign that we fiscal conservatives aren’t the only voices in the wilderness.

An enema with a sandblaster or a foot massage by a Pittsburgh Steelers Cheerleader?

Coming home to a raging house fire or arriving at your cabana on the beach replete with a fully stocked mini-fridge?

A hijacked jetliner crashing into the ocean off the coast of East Africa or a skillful landing on the Hudson River?

Five minutes in the ring with a folding metal chair in the hands of a steroid-ridden Jesse Ventura, or a playful moment in a pile of fallen leaves with your little girls?

Last one…don’t let me influence your choice:

A bloated pork-ridden stimulus package of some eight hundred billion (soon to be worthless) dollars including billions for liberal pet projects and paybacks or

$430 billion dollars on tax cuts.

$114 billion for infrastructure projects.

$138 billion for extending unemployment insurance, food stamps and other provisions to help “Americans in need.”

$31 billion to address the housing crisis ($11 billion for a loan modification program, $20.4 billion in tax incentives for home purchases, $50 million to temporarily increase loan limits for Freddie, Fannie and FHA)

For those of you that can’t do math (sorry Mr. President, yes I am including you) that’s over one hundred billion dollars less than the current proposal.

…and

…it actually sounds like a real stimulus package – the lesser of two evils version at least.

Sadly, Barack Obama’s flavor of bipartisanship means we probably don’t have a choice.

Obama parties like it’s ten years ago…:

After pushing his $1.1 trillion Generational Theft Act of 2009 through the House last night, the White House apparently decided to throw itself a swank cocktail party. According to ABC’s Jake Tapper, the menu included alcoholic beverages (vodka martinis are an Obama favorite, reportedly) and wagyu steak.Yeah, “wagyu steak.” $100 per serving delicacy. I had to look it up, too.

…while FEMA (which, as we learned during the Katrina fiasco, is the President’s responsibility to run effectively) can’t power on to hundreds of thousands of freezing Kentuckians.

What’s the problem

I called my friend Kanye West. He says:

“Barack Obama hates white people“.

Ooh. Harsh stuff.

In the realm of politics, favorably comparing Barack Obama to Ronald Reagan is like comparing God to Satan.

But NPR done gone and done it any way.

The rise of Barack Obama and the historic challenges facing his presidency have prompted comparisons to past presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But in these very early days, there are also parallels to be drawn between Obama and a more recent occupant of the Oval Office: Ronald Reagan.

…actually Jimmy Carter comes more to mind for those of us that actually understand basic economics.

That’s not to say that there aren’t elements that Obama and Reagan have in common.For instance, they both wear neckties around their necks.

While both Presidents inherited trying economic times to say the least, it is abundantly clear that they have polar opposite remedies in mind.

It’s clear that Obama and Reagan are very different ideologically, Obama being a Democrat on the liberal side and Reagan a Republican and an iconic conservative.

One accurately saw government as the cause, not the solution and acted accordingly.

Leave it to NPR to compare these two statements and find similarity:

Most people who remember Reagan’s speech remember him saying government is not the solution. But Edwards recalls that Reagan also said this: “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it.”

Compare that to Obama’s inaugural address, in which he said the question is not whether the government is too big or too small, “but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. Those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account.”

Barack Obama, despite empty rhetoric to the contrary (watch what he does folks, not what he says), sees government as the solution, despite it being the cause.

Despite the fact that government stimulus programs don’t work (because they weren’t big enough?!) and despite TARP monies actually freezing credit even further, Obama proposes nearly a trillion dollars of government spending including money for the arts, and sod for the mall, among other disgustingly obvious liberal pet projects.

All in the face of the fact that Reagan’s actions set forth the largest and longest run of economic growth and prosperity in American history.

A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from others’.

Obama and his book-learned elite cronies put our futures in great peril by electing to consider what Reagan did and do the opposite.

And why not? Look where it got us…and Jimmy Carter.

[former Rep. Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma] is one of a number of prominent Republicans who say they voted for Obama. The list includes several of Reagan’s top advisers, such as Gen. Colin Powell and former Reagan Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein. Edwards goes so far as to wonder whether the former president himself, if he were still alive, might have thought about voting Democratic in 2008.

Not a chance.

Republicans of today couldn’t touch the garment of Ronald Reagan. Prominent conservatives that voted for Obama, the slim and now meaningless minority that they represent, did so for a lack of top-down conservative leadership on the part of the Republican party. Some even did so to send a message to the party.

Ronald Reagan was a man of action and leadership. Action that gave gravity to his words. Leadership borne in true change in our government, not Obama’s brand of more of the same sold as Change^©.

Barack Obama is a man of words; a lack of corresponding action and experience rendering his words even more useless to all but those Americans deliberately marginalized by he and his ilk.

…at least be thankful you’re not stuck at this Super Bown “party”

The invite of the year (so far): Barack Obama’s Super Bowl watching party. . .elected officials break out 11 Ds, 4Rs

Senators: Bob Casey (D-PA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Arlen Specter (R-PA)

House members: Elijah Cummings (D-MD); Artur Davis (D-AL); Rosa DeLauro (D-CT); Charlie Dent (R-PA); Mike Doyle (D-PA); Trent Franks (R-AZ); Raul Grijalva (D-AZ); Paul Hodes (D-NH); Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-DC); Patrick Murphy (D-PA); Fred Upton (R-MI)

It’d be a matter not merely of eating the muzzle of a handgun, but of making sure it’s a big-enough one.  At least .40S&W.

Although it certainly makes some peoples’ legs all tingly.

From David Brauer’s Twitterage over the weekend:

Saw, for first time, “Don’t blame me, I voted for McCain” bumper sticker. Shoe, meet other foot.

I have a hunch someone could make a buck or two with…

…hm.

Wait just a doggone minute.

More on Monday in a few minutes.

To:  President Barack Obama

From:  Mitch Berg – American, Citizen, Accidental Constituent

Re:  Geese and Ganders

Mr. President,

As a person with an innate notion of common sense and right and wrong, I don’t disagree that it’s really, really bad PR for Wall Street firms and banks that are asking for government bailouts to be giving out nearly $20 billion in bonuses.

The tongue-lashing you gave them…:

Summoning reporters after a closed meeting with Mr. Geithner, Mr. Obama blasted earlier news that Wall Street had paid out $18.4 billion in bonuses, calling it “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful.””There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” he said. “Now is not that time.”

The tough talk suggested a firmer stand from the administration in its oversight of banks. But it also had a political purpose: eliciting support for an expensive and unpopular bailout program that will likely require more cash from Congress.

…makes political sense.

On the other hand, the bonuses are attempts to retain top “talent” at firms that do drive this nation’s economic engine.  Right?  Wrong?  I’m not sure.

But it’s certainly no worse than the hundreds of millions – billions – your administration is planning to give to ACORN, the National Endowment for the Arts, global warming cultists, unions, and Trojan-brand condoms – none of which brings a single job to this nation (other than, I suppose, at Trojan – although I suppose you know that recessions actually help the market for contraceptives, among other less-clinical goodies).

If I didn’t know better – and as a bitter, gun-clinging Jesus freak, you just know I don’t, right? – I’d almost thing you were trying an FDR-like bit of populist displacement, to focus the people’s attention on these (ill-timed) bonuses via the lens of your friends in tingly-leg media, to drown out questions about the pork your “stimulus” plan is shoveling.

Please get back to me.  Thanks.

That is all.

Turn down your themostat, says Obama…

…as he turns the Oval Office into a greenhouse:

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

In a visit to the Capitol on Tuesday, Mr. Obama surprised his former Senate colleagues by stopping to talk to reporters.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Hawaii?

So that whole Chicago thing was just a Bobby-Ewing-stepping-out-of-the-shower hallucination?

How bad is the stimulus?

Look – I’m a Friedman guy; free market uber alles.  The only justification for any Keynesian frippery in this sort of situation is if it creates jobs, directly or (not very) indirectly.

Plenty of better bloggers than I have covered the overdose of pork that the stimulus provides; my associate editor Johnny Roosh has done a good job of that as well.

How bad is it, though?  When you hear people saying “aren’t artists’ paychecks just as important as factory workers’ paychecks?”

No, they are not.  Art is a good thing; I can even justify some public purchase of art on some level (say, public architecture).  But art as a rule isn’t a job creator – certainly not in any major numbers.  (And let’s not jobs at Broadway theatres, here; Broadway isn’t art, it’s commerce).

The good news?  At least the Republicans sacked up and voted unanimously against the stimulus bill yesterday, for all the good it did.

But even some Democrats get it:

Senate Transportation Chair Steve Murphy has some big problems with the federal stimulus package working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives. The Red Wing Democrat said it spends far too little on transportation, while funneling money into education and health and human services, which will not generate the jobs needed to jump start the economy.

“That bill that came out of the House of Representatives is a pile of donkey dung. It’s not going to do any good,” Murphy said. “They’ve got their priorities bass-ackwards. The majority of that money should be for infrastructure.”

He’s pretty smart for a DFLer.

I bet he has an interesting time at his next convention…

Why does the left hate Limbaugh so much?

It’s not just that he eats their lunch in the marketplace (markets have no meaning to the left); it’s not that he “dumbs down” the American people (a Pew study last year showed that…:

…Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners.

So intelligence doesn’t matter to them either.

No.  It’s because Limbaugh is the one nationally-prominent ideological conservative who is unapologetic on the subject,and has the capability of leading people – as opposed to the party – back to where it belongs.

Todd Huston notices just how wrong that is:

I am through with Limbaugh’s supporting the long tradition of rugged American individualism, done with his harping on free trade, and up to here with his going on about the Founders and our American character. I am worn out with his bellicose talk of stopping terrorism, and so done with Limbaugh’s high profile as one of the most listened to conservative advocates in the country that I could just spit. I simply don’t want this Limbaugh character to be the sole voice of the GOP. Stop it now. Make it go away.Instead, it would be nice if just ONE of our actual, purported Republican politicians would be the voice of the GOP espousing all the conservative ideals that Limbaugh so eloquently expounds upon day in and day out. Wouldn’t it be grand if just one guy with the guts to back up the rhetoric with a voting record would become the voice of the party of conservatism?

Liberals have their Ted Kennedys and Nancy Pelosis that do no compromising. They have their “Baghdad” Jim McDermotts that cavort across the globe advocating for murderers and tyrants the world over. They’ve had their presidential candidates “reporting for duty” that have in the past been key members of committees advocating for putting our own soldiers in jail and indicting Americans for faux war crimes. For that matter, the left even has an actual ex-president that runs to the support of every tin-pot dictator in the world pretending at being a diplomat.

The left is unapologetic for its support of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, the biggest mass murderers in history. They are resolved to turn our foreign policy over to foreign bodies like the UN. The left is four square against freedom of religion and keen to remove uncounted numbers of our Constitutional rights from us. They hate capitalism, property rights and are against open debate in our schools… yet they say so proudly and their politicians cultivate voting records that reflect those beliefs.

There’s no “compromise” there. The left knows that politics ain’t beanball.

The Obama Administration is just like Lori Sturdevant; they want their Republicans to be nice and wishy-washy and pliable.

They want a party full of Chuck Hegels and Ron Erhards – worthless “moderate” vermin (politically speaking) who are of no use to dissenting from the majority agenda.
I figured before the election that Obama would overreach on things like the “Fairness” Doctrine, measures to silence opposition.

In my wildest dreams, I didn’t think he’d do it this fast.

I hope he continues.  He’s clearly been reading his own press; he thinks he’s invincible; that he can get away with anything.
Good.

Obama’s “radical change” from Bush’s policy on Guantanamo cribbed almost word-for-word from Bush’s policy:

Earlier today, CJ posted his examination of the Executive Orders regarding the Guantanamo Detention Facilities. His conclusion is that it bears little difference than the way the Bush Administration has been handling the situation; and that there’s enough legal loopholes in the wording, as to allow President Obama an “out”, from following through with closing the facility, should the Administration fail to solve the dilemma of what to do with the remaining detainees.

So; the adminstration of “radical change” seems to be changing little to nothing about the nation’s foreign policy, is actively moving to squelch the civil liberties of its opposition, and has turned the Democrats – who spent the last four years pantomiming as “fiscally responsible” – into crack whores with stolen gold cards.

Si, se pudo.

Remember when the giggling classes were in full smarm because John McCain didn’t have an IPhone (or whatever it was that aroused their shrill ire)?

Ahem:

Both outgoing and incoming [White House email] are out, the result, an aide explained, of an outage with the Outlook server. The aide said the outage goes beyond the press shop. The first lady’s office is also without e-mail, as are other offices.

There was no indication when the e-mail service would return. For the moment, the press office is making even more use of the loudspeaker in the briefing room.

And the executive orders that President Obama signed this morning were photocopied and are sitting on a table outside the briefing room.

I bet their websites are written in Fortran.

…but sometimes they’re just stupid.

Nancy Pelosi gave up on the condoms today, but stimuless dollars for ACORN?

Seriously?!

Republican lawmakers are raising concerns that ACORN, the low-income advocacy group under investigation for voter registration fraud, could be eligible for billions in aid from the economic stimulus proposal working its way through the House.

House Republican Leader John Boehner issued a statement over the weekend noting that the stimulus bill wending its way through Congress provides $4.19 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities.”

…probably won’t make it through the Senate, but come on.

Weasels.

Her fellow New York Democrats don’t like Senator Gillibrand:

Gillibrand, the newly appointed junior senator from New York, has never been shy about her political ambitions — or her willingness to vault over older, more experienced politicians.That aggressiveness and self-confidence has endeared her to the powerful politicians who share her impatience to get ahead — including Hillary Clinton, whose seat she’ll take; David Paterson, who appointed her to it; and Chuck Schumer, who’ll be the senior senator to her junior.

But many of those who know Gillibrand best — Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation — weren’t exactly high-fiving over the pick, and not just because several wanted the job themselves.

“Nobody really likes her,” sniped one New York City-area member, speaking on condition of anonymity.
She’s smart and capable, but she’s rubbed people the wrong the way,” said another.

“I think she’s going to get a serious primary in 2010,” opined a longtime state Democratic operative who supports Gillibrand.

Many members of the state’s congressional delegation skipped Gillibrand’s announcement in Albany, mostly citing other commitments.

And one notable absentee was sending a message: Pro-gun-control Long Island Rep. Carolyn McCarthy says she’ll run against Gillibrand to protest the new senator’s pro-gun record and perfect NRA rating.

Pro-gun?  Perfect NRA score?

I might just peel off a $20 to support her myself.

So now that Obama is President, is dissent still the highest form of patriotism?

Is “Questioning Authority” still a virtue?

Is “speaking truth to power” still a something to uphold and revere?

Just checking.

Nancy Pelosi: make birth control part of the stimulus:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic “stimulus” package, claiming “contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”

By that logic, think how much money we’d save if we “aborted” everyone on welfare!

I suppose it’s patriotic – just like paying more taxes…
No, really – birth control won’t be necessary for this particular stimulus, since we’re all getting [indelicate sex-act and anatomical reference redacted for propriety’s sake]

Blockbuster is selling a DVD about the life and times of..Barack Obama.

Con1 at Conservative Oasis comments:

This man just won one of the most historic elections of our Nation’s history, and we have a video on the impulse buying section of Blockbuster, with a complete educational history of “who the hell you just voted for, you damn fools…” And yes, what a perfect place for it to sit, right where people who do things on impulse, will do so again.

He’s just gotten into office, and not done really a damn thing of import, except get elected on a magic carpet ride of MSM ass kissing, softballs, and starry eyed sympathy from a voting block infused with hope driven children, and attention starved minorities.

And, all for .99 cents. A fair price, me thinks, for such a story of really, just about nothing to holler about, yet.

We’ve finally turned into the pop culture we feared we would be. We’ve American Idoled ourselves a new President, voting off the island the true survivors, the real qualified candidates, all because we “liked” the other guy more. The underdog.

The vid is 99 cents, by the way.  I’m tempted to grab one, just for comparison purposes in four years.

Oh, and if you can’t make it to a DVD player, and have $50 to spare?

You can carry your little red blue book with you!

Includes themes of democracy, politics, war, terrorism, race, community, jurisprudence, faith, personal responsibility, national identity, and above all, his hoped-for vision of a new America. POCKET OBAMA is a portable, everyday primer for readers who want to examine the substance of his thought and reflect on the next great chapter in the American story.

Be ready for the Great Change Forward!

On Tuesday, when word got out that there’d been a flub in the Oath of Office, the assembled masses of Sorosbloggers swung into action.

“It was Roberts’ fault!  You can NOT BLAME BARACK!  IT WAS ROOOOOOOBEEEEEERTTTTTTSS FAULLLLLLLLT!”

Duly noted.

At any rate, the conspiracy-mongers have been silenced:

At 735 pm, Roberts administered the oath of office again to obama in the map room. Robert gibbs said the wh counsel, greg craig, believes the oath was fine Tuesday, but one word was out of sequence so they did this out of a “an abundance of caution.”

Perhaps Roberts could have re-notarized Obama’s birth certificate, and silenced ninnies from both sides…

I usually try to keep my criticisms of lefties, and leftism, substantive and fact-based.

Being human, I occasionally resort to sarcasm, humor and snark.  And you know it’s part of the reason you come here, so don’t try and get cute about it.

Sometimes, the best I can manage is a point-by-point fisking.

But in almost seven years of blogging, this is the first time I’ve had to sit back, scratch my eyes, re-read something, and decide that simply presenting the offending material in its full, dim, foul glory is all the criticism that material needs.

And so I present Grace Kelly – local 9/11 Truther and cog in the local DFL machine.  Her particularly wide-eyed, fabulist brand of jackboot-with-a-smile liberalism has turned up on this blog a few times in the past.

But she’s outdone herself this time.  She has summed up the collective id of the Democrat base in this country, in much the same way Rain Man summed up the cards in the casino, and presented it to the world in the form of a poem.

Lead Us President Barack Obama

At a time of darkness, the light appears
– that light is President Barack Obama.

At a time when knowledge, skill and science was disdained, a champion of knowledge, skill and science has stepped forward
– that champion is President Barack Obama.

At a time when it seemed that only corporations and the rich were represented, a representative of people appeared
– that representative is President Barack Obama.

At a time of torture, a leader of morality appears
– that leader is President Barack Obama.

At a time when the world no longer respects us as country, a reason for respect appears
– that reason is President Barack Obama.

At a time of too many wars and too much violence, we look for the wisdom of peace and diplomacy,
– that wisdom is President Barack Obama.

At a time of great economic crisis, a president who leads comes,

lead us President Barack Obama, speak for us,
lay out your plan of action,

And we the people will say
YES. WE. CAN!

I’ve been staring at this for ten minutes.

Have at it, all.  I’ve got everything…and yet nothing.

UPDATE: An emailer sends:

At a time with no flushable toilets

a man invented such a toilet

And that man was Thomas Crapper

UPDATE 2: Another emailer:

At at time when freshness eluded us
a man made freshness attainable.
And that man was Irving Douchebag.

Keep ’em coming!

UPDATE 3: The hits keep coming

At a time when bands’ names were lame, and balloons were merely toys
A man came a long and fixed both.
And that man was Count Von Zeppelin.

More!  More!

The DC/New York/LA political/media establishment has always hated W. At first it was because he, like Reagan, wasn’t really one of them.  He beat the “smart” guy in 2000.  He cut taxes and (regrettably) triangulated around them on spending.  He beat the “smart” guy Kerry.

But why do they really  hate him?

William McGurn Wthinks he knows why:

Here’s a hint: It’s not because of his failures. To the contrary, Mr. Bush’s disfavor in Washington owes more to his greatest success. Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable.

As I wrote a couple of years ago at the dawn of the surge,  the Dems really only have two templates for a “successful” war:  World War II (a big-government war won, to a great extent, by socialist means; universal service, government commanding the means of production, immense control over society) and Vietnam (which was a military defeat for the US, but a political bonanza for them. We’ll come back to that).

Outside those two comfort zones, I’m afraid Democrats don’t know what to make of things.

Here in the afterglow of the turnaround led by Gen. David Petraeus, it’s easy to forget what the smart set was saying two years ago — and how categorical they all were in their certainty. The president was a simpleton, it was agreed. Didn’t he know that Iraq was a civil war, and the only answer was to get out as fast as we could?

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — the man who will be sworn in as vice president today — didn’t limit himself to his own opinion. Days before the president announced the surge, Joe Biden suggested to the Washington Post he knew the president’s people had also concluded the war was lost. They were, he said, just trying to “keep it from totally collapsing” until they could “hand it off to the next guy.”
For his part, on the night Mr. Bush announced the surge, Barack Obama said he was “not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Three months after that, before the surge had even started, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pronounced the war in Iraq “lost.” These and similar comments, moreover, were amplified by a media echo chamber even more absolute in its sense of hopelessness about Iraq and its contempt for the president.

Another problem for the left is that the Vietnam template keeps getting more and more obsolete:

For many of these critics, the template for understanding Iraq was Vietnam — especially after things started to get tough. In terms of the wars themselves, of course, there is almost no parallel between Vietnam and Iraq: The enemies are different, the fighting on the ground is different, the involvement of other powers is different, and so on.

Still, the operating metaphor of Vietnam has never been military. For the most part, it is political. And in this realm, we saw history repeat itself: a failure of nerve among the same class that endorsed the original action.

As with Vietnam, with Iraq the failure of nerve was most clear in Congress. For example, of the five active Democratic senators who sought the nomination, four voted in favor of the Iraqi intervention before discovering their antiwar selves.

Making Dem leaders look like fools after doubling back on themselves; that is the ultimate crime.