The Golden Age of Obama

Things are not all sunshine and roses in Obamaland. Back around the first of October, when it became obvious that The Messiah was going to win the election, the Dow took a 2,500 point dive. It hovered between 8,000 and 9,000 until shortly after he took office, and now, since he's had an opportunity to begin implementing his grand plans, it has tanked almost another 2,000 points. They say a picture is worth a thousand words...look at this chart of the Dow for the last year. It has lost fully 50% of its value since last May, and the downturn is obviously accelerating at a precipitous rate.

Had anyone asked a couple of months ago, I would have said that I thought 7,000 was the bottom - it couldn't possibly fall below that. Well, fall it did, closing today at 6,763. There is no reason whatsoever to think that we are finished yet. Experts predict that we will learn Friday that 700,000 jobs were lost in February. The Sears store up the street from my house, where my daughter works, informed their employees the other day that the store will be closing on May 31st. Many retail establishments are already struggling - by the Christmas season, which they all have relied on for decades to put the "in the black," so many people will be out of work that malls will look like ghost towns.

In the midst of all of this, we have a president who states, on the whitehouse.gov website, that he and his hapless vice-president "will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty and hunger around the world in half by 2015, and they will double our foreign assistance to achieve that goal." This will be paid for, of course, with taxpayer dollars which could have gone to those struggling retail establishments to help cut extreme poverty and hunger right here at home.

Obama and his Democrat colleagues have spent more money in thirty days than anyone in the history of this nation. They are throwing unfathomable amounts of our money at their pet causes, with no accountability and less judgment. I have been seeing ads all over the internet, prominently featuring pictures of The One, encouraging me to apply now for my grant - telling me that there is free money out there, thousands of dollars worth, that I can apply for and never have to repay. Just a few minutes ago, this landed in my inbox:

"Find out today if you are entitled!" Entitled? Entitled?! It's MY money...and my children's, and my grandchildren's, and...you get the idea. Tomorrow will mark the six week anniversary of the inauguration, and already I barely recognize my country. To those who remember the Carter years, they're going to look like a walk in the park compared to the Golden Age of Obama.

First they came for Joe the plumber

Now they're after Rush. And his baby brother isn't letting it go unnoticed.

This Is Way Bigger Than Rush

The Democrats, along with those on the right who seem more worried about incurring the disdain of the wrongheaded left than of their fellow patriots, are feverishly promoting their Saul Alinsky-inspired scheme to demonize and divide their most effective political opponents.

What would be amusing, were matters not so gravely serious today, is the utter juvenile transparency in the liberals' efforts to vilify Rush Limbaugh.

They've been doing it for 20 years, but this time, they're better-organized and have a broader purpose. So those who haven't had the courage to stand by him should understand that Rush is not the ultimate target here. We all are -- those, that is, who oppose their Marxist agenda and Stalinist tactics.

[snip]

Rush is the target because he represents the real opposition. He's the leading voice for those who are really standing up for America and its founding ideals. Too much of our opposition is nominal only. Too much of our opposition is unaware we're in a war for the very survival of those precious principles.

[snip]

Rush wants Obama to fail in his unabashed efforts to permanently turn this center-right nation radically toward the left. He does not want America to fail. Rush is unabashedly rooting for America. And anyone with the slightest ability or moral clarity to make mental distinctions understands this.

Yet many have deliberately twisted Rush's meaning to suggest that he wants America, under Obama's presidency, to fail.

The dirty little secret is that many of the liberals making this specious argument are the very people who truly were rooting for America to fail when George W. Bush was president. They were rooting for us to lose the war in Iraq. Harry Reid declared the war lost, you may recall. And they were talking down the economy, even when it was humming.

These liberals are simply projecting their deplorable mindset onto Rush and other conservatives. Because they wanted America to fail under Bush, they just assume Rush and other conservatives want America to fail under Obama. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

So those of you on the right who are refusing to defend Rush by making this obvious distinction better wake up. The people on the left making this point are the same ones who slandered President Bush by saying he started the Iraq war for oil or that he intentionally delayed federal aid to New Orleans' Katrina victims because a disproportionate number of them were African-Americans. Destructive, libelous rubbish!

It's time for you sycophants to understand who is trying to stand up for the America we believe in and that your sycophancy only enables those whose agenda cannot succeed without silencing the effective opposition.

Remember: To liberals, this isn't just about Rush -- not even close. It's about you, me and anyone else who loves and defends those things -- the Constitution, family values, the unique American culture, etc. -- that make America unique.

It's time you represented the opposition, too, and directed your outrage at those who would use the full power of government to target individuals, whether they be Rush Limbaugh or Joe the Plumber.

Well said, Mr. Limbaugh. And I suspect you would have said the same even if he wasn't your big brother.

It isn't quite a shrug...

...but Atlas is getting restless. Great piece today from Investor's Business Daily:

Capital On Strike

Economy: Barack Obama won the presidency by vowing to bring "hope and change" to America. We've seen the change as the economy's deterioration accelerated. Now where's the hope?

In the three months since the election, the broadest measure of the stock market's value, the Wilshire 5000 Index, has plunged more than 30%, slicing over $3 trillion from Americans' wealth. Investors have walked away from investing, while businesses shut down factories and offices and slash jobs.

This is both highly significant and dangerous. Capital, bluntly put, has gone on strike. Those who own wealth are pushing it to the sidelines, as a young and inexperienced president tries to jam through the most sweeping economic changes in over 70 years.

[snip]

ABC News reported this week that many upper-income taxpayers already are planning to cut back on work and investments to stay under $250,000 in income — the point where Obama's punitive taxes kick in. No one wins from this, yet Obama seems oblivious.

For the first time in our history, we are no longer the perceived as the land of milk and honey.

This isn't the only warning sign. A new study asserts that some 100,000 highly educated, well-trained Indians now living in the U.S. will return home in the next few years. Ditto China.

Immigrant entrepreneurs are highly sensitive bellwethers of economic and social conditions. They know where the opportunities are — and where they aren't. They're voting with their feet.

[snip]

[W]hen taxes go up, regulations proliferate and the rule of law and private property protections are weakened, the economy will invariably suffer. This is a universal lesson of economic history, one we ignore at our peril. And yes, this is what's happening now.

No, we don't blame all our current ills on President Obama. He came in at a tough time, when many bad decisions had already been made. But he is responsible for what he's done since.

His stimulus package is little more than a down payment on a socialist economy. It raises taxes on the successful, brings back the welfare state, hands out favors and cash to friends of one political party, while imposing government control over the entire free market in ways that just a year ago would have seemed unimaginable.

Read the whole thing.

Oops! He did it again!

Yet another Obama nominee with tax issues. This time it's Ron Kirk, former Dallas mayor and nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, and the unpaid taxes add up to roughly $10,000. As is becoming commonplace these days, now that he's been nominated for a cabinet position, Kirk says he'll pay up. Fox News has the details here.

I'm beginning to understand why it feels like I pay so damned much in taxes...I'm apparently the only sucker in the country actually paying them!

Bam's Bad Medicine

Sally Pipes has an excellent piece in the New York Post today discussing Obama's healthcare plans. The whole article is definitely worth a read, but this is my favorite byte:

The president's budget repeats the popular claim that 45.7 million Americans are uninsured. The figure is taken as proof positive that the current system is failing - and that the government must step in to provide a remedy.

But that misleading number includes millions we can hardly call uninsured. About 18 million of the uninsured make more $50,000 a year - and almost 10 million have yearly incomes over $75,000. More than 10 million aren't US citizens. And as many as 14 million are already eligible for government programs like Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP - but haven't signed up.

Hmmm...let's do a little math. Eighteen million with incomes in excess of $50,000 a year. That's more than double what some folks I know personally earn, and they manage to afford insurance for their family. "More than" 10 million illegal immigrants - we'll be conservative and just say it's an even 10 million. And another 14 million who are already eligible for existing government programs, but haven't chosen to enroll in them for one reason or another...dare we hope it's a sense of pride and self-respect? Whatever the reason...18 + 10 + 14 = 42, unless they've changed the rules for addition recently. Forty-two million of the 45.7 million uninsured! And, given that it's actually "more than" 10 million illegals, feasibly every single one of these "victims" is a victim by their own choice. At worst, we have less than 4 million people out there who want health insurance and are unable to get it (though it's difficult to imagine who they are...perhaps those who fall in the gap between Medicaid eligible and $50,000 a year?). For less than four million people we are on the verge of annihilating the health care industry in this country forever? Balderdash!

My own daughter, a high school senior, has dreamed of being a doctor for years. During the campaign last fall, hearing Obama's plans for "fixing" our healthcare system, she decided that if he was elected she would instead pursue a career in journalism and/or politics. She is unwilling to invest so many years of her life to pursue a dream that has been taken from her before she even begins. She is wise.

As usual, government seeks to "solve" a problem without addressing any of the root causes of the problem. If they truly want to fix the healthcare problems in this country, they should rescind most of the regulations placed on the industry - it is estimated that for every hour spent in actual patient care there is more than one hour spent making sure that medical professionals are adhering to all of the governmental regulations they are compelled to follow. Getting rid of the more contemptible regulations would greatly reduce costs.

At the same time, some additional regulations should be placed on the trial lawyers who are busily chasing ambulances. While there must be recourse for those who are genuine victims of poor medical care, the threat of lawsuits adds incalculably to the cost of healthcare. Doctors perform batteries of unnecessary and expensive tests prior to treating patients because they live in constant fear of being sued. Malpractice insurance premiums routinely run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, annually, for high-risk specialties. The billions that are wasted in, and avoiding, the courtroom are killing all of us.

Finally, it goes without saying that the American taxpayer should never have to foot the bill for treatment for anyone who is in this country illegally. As Zig Ziglar used to say, "You are where you are because it is exactly where you chose to be." Such is the case with illegal immigrants - they are here because they chose to violate the law and sneak in to our country through the back door. We owe them nothing. The idea that their criminal act makes them my responsibility is beyond absurd.

America has the most advanced technology and best trained medical professionals in the world. We are on the brink of throwing all of that away in exchange for a socialist dream of equality. For my money, equally miserable just doesn't cut it. Obama...heal thyself.

Obama throws our allies under the bus

First it was this story from Bloomberg:

Eastern European governments that ran political risks to support former President George W. Bush’s security policies are now concerned that his successor, Barack Obama, will backtrack on those regional commitments.

Leaders in the Czech Republic, Poland and other former communist nations face a backlash at home over their support of Bush-era initiatives, including the proposed U.S. missile- defense system and troop participation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[snip]

While it’s too early to say what the president’s overall foreign policy will be, “we can see that Obama wants better relations with Russia and that he’s skeptical about missile defense,” says Jaroslaw Walesa, a lawmaker in Poland’s ruling Citizens’ Platform party and the son of the country’s first post-communist president, Lech Walesa.

[snip]

Concern is particularly acute now because of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent muscle-flexing, including last year’s war in Georgia and this year’s natural-gas dispute with Ukraine.

Now, Fox News reports that the Russian newspaper Kommersant printed a story alleging that Obama wrote to Medvedev offering to scrap the missile defense system:

President Obama offered to consider scrapping plans for a missile defense shield in Europe if Russia helps rein in Iran's nuclear program, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.

The article said Obama wrote to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to tell him Russia's aid in resolving the threat from Iran would make the missile shield plans unnecessary, according to an account from Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

A senior administration official told FOX News that Obama sent a letter to Medvedev but "we won't comment on the specifics."

Bet this change doesn't feel too hopeful to our friends in Poland and the Czech Republic. As his voters are beginning to learn, there is nothing which is sacred to The One, except The One himself. And he's having the time of his life.

Will Obama get anything right?

It's almost too incredible for even a cynic like me to believe. Today's news...

While publicly calling it a "negative development," U.S. officials are privately backing Pakistan's "sharia law for peace" deal.

The EPA is expected to begin regulating carbon dioxide, thus hastening our fall into the second Great Depression.

John Kerry is acting as personal postman between Hamas and The Messiah.

Iran is considering face-to-face talks with Obama, assuming, of course, that he meets their demands (does anyone doubt his willingness to do so?). Oh, and the UN now says Iran has enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb.

After having just dropped/relaxed/ignored sanctions against Syria, it comes to light that they are building a chemical weapons plant.

And, of course, all of this comes on the heels of the burgeoning revolution spawned by the Democrats race to spend money faster than they can print it (discussed below). All of this in ONE DAY?!

Change we can believe in? I feel like I'm living in a horror movie.

The Real Catastrophe

Bradley R. Schiller, writing for the Wall Street Journal, believes Obama's rhetoric is the real catastrophe.

President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.

In his remarks, every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom. As he tells it, today's economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover.

This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics.

[snip]

Mr. Obama's analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they're also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a "recovery" package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy's woes might produce better policies.

Read the whole thing at the link above.

Compare and Contrast

I'll take Reagan for $500, Alex.

Bait and Switch Strong; Economy, not so much

The White House began a concerted campaign to lower expectations for the stimulus bill on the Sunday morning news shows today, Reuters reports. No surprise, of course - this is becoming a predictable pattern for the new administration - build up wild expectations to reach the desired goal, then immediately set about deflating them.

One section of the article caught my eye. Recall that Obama plans to sign the monstrosity into law in Denver on Tuesday:

Obama faces a new potential flashpoint next week when two Detroit automakers, General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC, must reach agreements with the United Auto Workers labor union to restructure themselves.

Talks between GM and the union broke down on Saturday. Chrysler's negotiations with the UAW are also deadlocked.

Axelrod made it clear the White House would not intervene in the situation until after Tuesday.

Why? Why would Axelrod feel the need to "make it clear" that they would sit on their hands until "after Tuesday?" What is the relevance? Perhaps the comment is taken out of context, but I can't help but wonder what union boosting poison lurks in the 1,100 pages of garbage that is about to become the law of the land.

For the record, I sincerely hope that I'm just paranoid.

Change the mullahs can believe in?

American Thinker has a post up quoting Gateway Pundit, quoting Geostrategy Direct, which indicates that Obama has abandoned U.S. policy of sanctioning companies that aid Iran's nuclear and missile program. Geostrategy Direct is an open source intel newsletter available to subscribers only, so no link to the original item is available, though it is quoted extensively in the Gateway Pundit article, linked above.

The article contains a wealth of information, including a claim that we will be returning an ambassador to Syria, the first since 2005 after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and alleges that Obama has been engaging these rogue states covertly since well before the election in November.

It's pretty disturbing stuff...rather than quoting it here, read the whole thing from the source.

I dislike squishy sources and alarmist thinking, but this has a very strong ring of truth to it, given the recent decision by the new administration to waive sanctions against Syria.

Remember Julio?

Well, he obviously wasn't listening.

The Messiah Spake

And said nothing.

For a very long time.

Some of my favorite bits of the nothing...

"Now it's time for Iran to send some signals that it wants to act differently." Um, yeah. Unclench those fists, mullahs! The One has been in office for almost three weeks now - how very unreasonable of you to still want to wipe Israel off the map!

There are no earmarks in this stimulus package. We're all proud of that one!

Then there was that choice statement about our economy having been dependent on consumer spending, which was unsustainable.

Helen Thomas is always smashing. Can you name any countries in the Middle East that have nuclear weapons? Slam dunk! That one's so easy, even B. Hussein can't miss, right? Wrong. He wouldn't want to speculate...but certainly a nuclear arms race in that part of the world is not a great idea. The solution? We'll get rid of our nuclear stockpile to set a good example! Brilliant!

Taking a question from a Huffington Post "reporter" is always a good way to bring conservatives into the fold!

Perhaps I'm a little jaded. Perhaps I judge too harshly. Or perhaps this man is the most clueless, spineless, deceitful moron ever elected to any office higher than dogcatcher.

I'm having one of those moments....

...when I just want to scream, "DAMMIT, PEOPLE! THINK!!!"

Gallup has released new poll results indicating that the majority of Americans think The Messiah is doing a spiffy job of stimulating the economy, while congressional Republicans suck. The only possible explanation for this result is an epidemic of cranial-rectal inversion.

On a slightly more positive note, Rasmussen finds that 62% want the stimulus package to have more tax cuts and less spending.

Re: America's last president?

Call me irrational, but I still think Frank Marshall Davis was more to The One than just a mentor. You've likely seen it before, but in case you forgot...

The resemblance is striking. Especially when you factor in the mousy looking thing that was his mother...hard to see how the combination of old Stanley Ann and Barack Sr. resulted in Little Frank.

But, putting that bit of cattiness aside, his biography is not complete without throwing in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. The Obama campaign was absolutely textbook Alinsky...in the words of Alinsky's son, L. David Alinsky:

“I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”

I read Rules for Radicals during the campaign, and was astonished at how many of the "rules" were being applied, right before our very noses, while we remained completely unaware. And it continues today. Take, for example, Obama's recent fear-mongering warnings that if we wait, we will go from "crisis" to "catastrophe." Textbook Alinsky. Discussing how important it is to work within the system, as opposed to taking radical, revolutionary action (as Ayers' Weather Underground did), Alinsky writes:

"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families - more than seventy million people - whose incomes range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default."

[snip]

"A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives - agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate."

[snip]

"A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustating and hopeless. They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution."

We are being groomed then...being told that everything we once held dear about free markets and capitalism is doomed, that the very fabric of our nation is pulling apart and that only a dramatic reversal of past policies can save us. There is no hope save that granted us by the benevolent Messiah. He, and He alone, has the knowledge and strength to pull us from the abyss.

The goal, of course, is to take us so far down the road to socialism that, by the time we stir from our reverie and realize how far we have strayed, we will be so dependent on the generosity of our leaders and so cowed by cries that we are racists and bigots, that we will lack the conviction to right the ship of state. With each new government handout the ranks of the submissive will grow. With each small loss of freedom we allow them to inflict upon us we become less resilient.

The answer to the question, then, is in our hands today. Not tomorrow, next week or next year, for then it may be too late. We must rail against each infringement of our rights as if it were a life or death matter. We are too near the tipping point to do otherwise.

America's last president?

I was born on a presidential election day - November 6, 1928. Maybe (but probably not) that is why I have always been so interested in elections.

My paternal grandfather died at 75. My father died at 75. So, when George Bush was elected in 2000, at the time of my 72d birthday, I thought, "Gee! This may be my last president!" But, amazingly, election day 2004 rolled around and I'm still kicking. I thought, "Gee, George Bush may be my last president after all!"

Then came election day 2008. Hey, I'm still here. Feelin' great. I may see several more presidential elections.

But what worries me is this: Will Barack Obama be America's last president. At least, the America I have enjoyed for eight decades and counting?

When I read Obama's book "Dreams", I was puzzled by his almost reverent recollection of Frank Marshall Davis. Just what kind of thinking did he develop at the knee of this old Communist?

Then I read about Obama's time at Columbia. Now at the knee of Marxist professors.

He graduates and his classmates head off to lucrative jobs. Not Barack. He goes to Chicago to be a $1,000 a month "Community Organizer", or, a Commumnity Troublemaker as some of the wise black pastors at Chicago churches found him to be. (Barack managed to find a pastor who, like Davis and some left nut professors, really hated America.) I became worried that Barack Obama, like Fidel Castro many years before him, was really a Marxist and one day would surprise us with that announcement.

Next, Obama takes up with Bill Ayers and miraculously comes up with the tens of thousands of dollars (sans scholarships) to pay the tuition at Harvard. Now he is president, and I am waiting for "the announcement".

Turns out that Barack is a lot smarter than Fidel. While Castro just wanted to stick it in our face and damn the consequences, Barack has missions to accomplish! Like getting his hand in the Federal till to pass out big cash gifts in the form of tax rebates to people who do not pay taxes. As Hugo Chavez (and Hamas) have learned, that is how you buy votes!

He's got his hand on the throttle and he is going to drive this train where he wants it to go, smiling all the while and talking about what's right for the people.

So, be careful, America.

But, also, be careful Obama! Many before him have thought Americans were soft, could be easily defeated or be led off the edge of the cliff. Americans have always proven otherwise. Will they again?

The Fox Is The Finder, The Stink Lays Behind Her

John commented on my earlier comment to April's post re: Kenzi's b'day and the anniversary "invasion" of the Beatles.

John, I refer to BHO, as BO, because let's face it, b.o. stinks and BO stinks, too! So, I have titled this blog entry The Fox Is The Finder, The Stink Lays Behind Her, in fond memory of my late step-dad who humorously used this "phrase" many times in referring to "human tailpipe emissions." His name was also John and he often sprinkled his conversation and story-telling with facetious anecdotes, jokes, phrases, musical ditties, etal.

But this particular "fox/stink" quote of his has always remained in my mind because first of all, it really makes no sense whatsoever and it is even more difficult to explain to people who never knew my dad, but, secondly, I like it and I believe it succinctly sums up the liberal manure being spread around in D.C. now by "our" current CIC, Mr. 3P: President Pinocchio Puppetman and his 3P: purulently putrid puppetmasters.

Now, here is something that I just can't seem to "get" (as many liberals keep spouting that we conservatives just don't "get it"): just what is "it" that we are supposed to "get?" When I've asked for a simple explanation as to what it is that I don't "get," the libs don't have an answer to this. Perhaps, if I reversed positions (God forbid!) and accused them of "not getting it" and I were asked by them what don't they get, I would honestly reply: you don't get it that you're stupid.

And this brings into play the phrase: the fox is the finder, the stink lays behind her, which I've learned means, the fox goes looking for and thinks he is successful in finding "the truth, the way, the life, the answers to everything" (which makes him "smarter" than everyone else), when the real truth is that the "stink" that he leaves behind (but "forgets" that he's left this telltale souvenir, and neglects to skillfully remove the evidence) negates his self-image of superiority.

Apply this "fox/stink theory" to John Edwards, Geithner, Daschle, Streisand, Cher, Chevy Chase and the nameless, faceless liberal masses who, like the sheeple that they are and always will be, are the ones who really "don't get it." The "exclusivity" of being a liberal is delusional thinking, or "stinking thinking" which brings us back to the subject of BO stinks.

Folks, we got trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P(3P) and that stands for B(O)!

Pam (Pinky)

Krauthammer: The Fierce Urgency of Pork

Charles Krauthammer nails it again.

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

[snip]

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

Read the whole thing here.

Obama's Fabulous Fortnight

Never in recorded history have so few done so much to piss off so many so quickly. In a mere 14 days, the new administration has quite an impressive list of accomplishments:

• House Republicans are more united than they have been in recent memory against what is perhaps the worst idea of a "stimulus" package ever dreamed up
• Senate RINOs like Susan Collins and John McCain are showing signs of remembering the meaning of the word "conservative"
• Talk show fans everywhere are prepared for battle after the recent attacks on Limbaugh and fears of stifling restrictions on free speech
• More Americans are buying guns than ever in our history, afraid that their right to do so will soon be stripped away
• Taxpayers are sending letters to the IRS, telling them that they will pay their taxes when they are selected for a position in the cabinet
• The EU has threatened trade wars over Obama's "Buy American" proposal
• Iran has launched its first satellite amid demands for an American apology
• India has warned The One to keep his nose out of their business regarding their dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir
• Afghan officials are critical of U.S. plans to arm militias in the country to fight the Taliban
• Kyrgyzstan has submitted a bill to parliament that would close an American military base that is key to our efforts in Afghanistan
• North Korea is preparing a test of a long range missile
• Russia has embraced Obama's proposal to cut nuclear arsenals by up to 80%, noting that it will, of course, be contingent upon dropping the missile defense shield in Europe
• General Petraeus is reportedly extremely angry over Obama's refusal to heed the advice of his military leaders, and his continued demands for a detailed withdrawal plan for Iraq that can be accomplished in 16 months

And the list goes on....and on....and on. And I'm not even talking about the "distractions" of tax-dodging nominees, White House thermostat settings, wagyu beef bribery attempts, exceptions to lobbyist bans or being "tired of being in the White House."

During the campaign, I thought that all the talk of hope and change was "just words" - looks like I was sadly mistaken! This is change on a scale I would not have dreamed possible. Let it never be said that I fail to admit it when I am wrong...