Gibbsy, Rahm and I have a little drinking game for that one. We all took surreptitious shots after the Big O said it toward the end of the the press conference. Woo, that Jagr burns doing down, but it made my big LCD just a bit brighter.

Really, plenty of problems reach the Big Guy’s desk that are easy. Like hiring TATUS’s undersecretaries, and hitting the “Reset” button on the State Department, and the Potbelly’s menu he was asking for. The one problem that we’ve kept off his desk – and perhaps the biggest one – Michelle’s Bloomies credit bill for February. Ouch. That’ll make the Netanyahu thing seem like a kerfluffle.

Obama, a moderate with far too much respect for the globalized financial class, is surely the unleft, unradical president. Which makes you wonder why left and right find common cause in saying otherwise.

“The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and
indecency and include character assassination, selective
misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication
of falsehoods and an utter disregard for the truth.”

“A lobby,” Steve Rosen confided in an AIPAC internal memo, “is like
a night flower; it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.”

Yes, and long ago, Al Smith addressed the age-old problem of the
Rosens within: “The best way to kill anything un-American is to
drag it out into the open, because anything un-American cannot live
in the sunlight.”

Well done, Ambassador Freeman.

Frum‘s attack on Limbaugh should surprise no one at NR. Frum has a long history of seeking to advance himself by smearing others, from his 1991 American Spectator cover story attacking Pat Buchanan as an antisemite to his 2003 National Review cover story denouncing Buchanan, Tom Fleming, and Sam Francis as “unpatriotic” for opposing a war that turned out to be as disastrous for America as they predicted it would be. If National Review is sincerely repentent over having provided journalistic cover to Frum for years, it might, in the spirit of Lent, announce that it regrets publishing Frum’s 2003 attack and apologize to the “unpatriotic conservatives.” But I’m not holding my breath.

He has ordered 17,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, as the situation deteriorates and the NATO allies pull out. He has no exit strategy. He has read a repudiation of George Bush as a mandate for a government seizure of wealth and power that exceeds anything attempted in the Great Society.

Fully half of the $3.55 trillion in spending Obama will preside over this year will not be covered by tax revenue but by red ink. The money will have to be borrowed from abroad or printed by the Fed.

Not only is Barack running a deficit four times as large as Bush’s largest, he has called for $1 trillion in new taxes on America’s most successful, who have already seen their savings and pensions ravaged.

He wants a cap-and-trade system to deal with a global-warming or climate-change crisis many scientists believe is a hoax. He is going to provide health care for all, including immigrants, millions of whom arrive uninsured every year. He is going to plunge scores of billions more into education, though education has eaten up the wealth of an empire, as SAT scores sink further and further below the apogee of 1964, before LBJ and the feds barged in. He is going to ask Congress for authority to spend another $750 billion rescuing the banks.

He is going to find the cure for cancer. He is going to ensure every kid gets a college education. He is going to drop half of all wage-earners off the tax rolls, while the top 2 percent, who already pay 40 percent of all income taxes, are forced to cough up more.

Obama is misreading the election returns. When America voted to cancel the White House lease of Mr. Bush, it did not vote Barack Obama a blank check.

By misinterpreting his mandate, Obama has accomplished something John McCain could not – unite the Republican Party and instill in it a new esprit de corps. For the Obama budget is an insult to the core belief of the party – that free people, not coercive government, should shape the character of society.

By daring Republicans to fight on the issue of a $1.75 trillion deficit, Obama has liberated the GOP from any obligation to him. He has come out of the closet as a radical liberal spoiling for a fight over an agenda of radical change.

Sooner than any might have thought, we have clarity.

Will President Bush put his Lord and Savior above his office and lay it on the line to stop once and for all the wholesale slaughter of unborn children or will he simply make token efforts before the TV camera to perpetuate a pro-life image? Will he be the “living sacrifice” that the apostle Paul called us to be in Romans 12:1 and risk his own presidency to put an end to the socialist brainwashing programs at work in the public school system or will he just remodel and repackage them under a new name? Will he take an uncompromising stand against the enemies of Christ and their new-age quest for a one-world government and religion or will he merely try to strengthen our position and influence at the United Nations? Will he seek justice for the hundreds who suffered and died at the hands of the previous administration or will he befriend its leader in the name of tolerance, diversity and unity?

Will he protect our young from pedophiles within the homosexual community whose mission in life is to have sex with our children without fear of prosecution or will he choose to protect the predators instead by tolerating their abominable agenda of indoctrination disguised as healthy, normal and educational? Will he obey the Constitution and keep the federal government out of the church’s business as described in the 1st amendment or allow it to corrupt, control and silence the church’s gospel message of repentance and faith in Christ by promoting church/state partnerships?

Sure I’m thrilled to no longer see Clinton and Gore in the news every day. Nonetheless, the powers that brought them to the White House and kept them there for almost a decade are the same powers that brought us George W. Bush. If you doubt that, just sit back and watch the choices he makes over the next four years. Forget what he said on the campaign trail and watch what he does. If all we see out of him is more defense spending, a few minor tax cuts and a lot of ecumenical talk then you’ll know I was right when I said: “Socialism needs two legs on which to stand; a right and a left. While appearing to be in complete opposition to one another, they both march in the same direction.”