A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC

Interesting, this isn't over.  HT: Ken

Telegraph

The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost.

The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC's last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other "extreme weather events" were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The "science is settled", the "consensus" is intact.

Misandry

Classical Values :: A mainstream meme that cannot speak its name

The Final Freedoms

Good grief this is syncretism at its worst.  Take something from every type of religious writing there is, throw them together and mix with the new progressive mind set and voila!

The Final Freedoms

Almost four years ago, a manuscript started circulating on the web titled The Final Freedoms. The ideas contained within it are profound and new not just to the public domain but to history itself, and however implausible this may sound to the modern mind, this small work may hold the potential for changing the very course of human history. The reason for such an audacious statement becomes self-evident to those who take the time to fully explore its insights.

The following three essays go some way to explaining just why this material is an imperative study for all progressives and anyone looking for the means to radically change in the existing political and cultural status quo, indeed for anyone able to imagine beyond the limits of what history has presumed possible. For that line in the mind has been moved, and to move with it, is to change the future of human civilization and planet.


review: The Final Freedoms©free

On the horizon is an approaching religious, cultural and scientific furore so contentious, any clash of civilizations may have to wait. On one side, a manuscript titled: The Final Freedoms, against all the gravitas religious tradition can bring to bear.

The first wholly new interpretation for 2000 years of the moral teachings of Christ is on the web. Redefining all primary elements including Faith, the Word and the Resurrection, this new interpretation questions the validity and origins of all Christian tradition; focusing specifically on marriage, love and human sexuality, it overturns all natural law ethics and theory. At stake is the credibility of several thousand years of religious history and moral teaching, and will certainly impact other fields of intellectual inquiry.

The Democratic Party is No Longer the Pro-Israel Part

This has become more apparent for some time now:

YID With LID:

As the far left progressive movement continues its stranglehold on the Democratic Party, the party faithful moves away from Israel to satisfy the progressives.

Progressive websites such as the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post contain some of the most vile Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitic rhetoric on the web.

For example during the controversy surrounding the Charles Freeman appointment last year the following was posted on Huffington post:

The Name of God: Jehovah

Nice summary of how the term Jehovah became used.  It is an artificial construct and really should be avoided as it is inaccurate:

Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament

The name Jehovah is not the real name of God. Let me explain. The word Jehovah, a popular English name used by Christians to identify the God of the Old Testament, was not used until after 1278 A.D.

In the Hebrew Bible, the name of God is expressed by four consonants: YHWH. These four consonants are also known in academic circles as the Tetragrammaton. The name of God was revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai:

The Boat Beneath the Pyramid

Fascinating:

Talking Pyramids: Ancient Egyptian Pyramids News

There are few new additions to that great web resource Giza Archives that readers will be interested in. Two of these relate to the solar boat of Khufu and the pit in which it was found in 1954.

The Internet? Bah!

Wonderful prescience circa 1995, heh.

Clifford Stoll: Why Web Won't Be Nirvana - Newsweek.com

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

Dems sneak in bill to punish CIA

Good grief.  At least they have been caught out, again:

 Washington Examiner

I just got an urgent call from a Republican source on the House Intelligence Committee. The House is about to debate the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act (H.R. 2701), and, with all eyes are on the health care summit, Democrats have slipped into the bill a new provision that would establish criminal punishments for CIA agents and other intelligence officials who engage in "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" during interrogations.

The Health Summit

National Review Online

Things could surely change this afternoon, but so far it is hard to see how the Democrats are doing themselves anything but harm with the health-care summit.

Beyond particular observations about individual exchanges or moments I would say the morning’s session suggests three broad points. First, the Democrats appear to have no particular purpose in mind for this event. They’re not driving anywhere, or making a clear individual case, while Republicans clearly want to get across the point that we should scrap the current bills and start over in pursuit of a few incremental steps. The Democrats may have thought that simply putting the spotlight on Republicans when the subject is health care would make the GOP look bad. But Republicans so far seem prepared enough and focused enough to avoid that, and to make the Democrats look rather aimless by comparison.

The Summit So Far - Yuval Levin - The Corner on National Review Online

Things could surely change this afternoon, but so far it is hard to see how the Democrats are doing themselves anything but harm with the health-care summit.

Beyond particular observations about individual exchanges or moments I would say the morning’s session suggests three broad points. First, the Democrats appear to have no particular purpose in mind for this event. They’re not driving anywhere, or making a clear individual case, while Republicans clearly want to get across the point that we should scrap the current bills and start over in pursuit of a few incremental steps. The Democrats may have thought that simply putting the spotlight on Republicans when the subject is health care would make the GOP look bad. But Republicans so far seem prepared enough and focused enough to avoid that, and to make the Democrats look rather aimless by comparison.

WSJ: Obama's 'Sneaky' New Tax on Investments

I'm afraid there will be more surprises yet to come:

TaxProf Blog:

The White House's new health-care proposal promises the "largest middle class tax cut for health care in history," which is a creative way of describing a vast taxpayer-subsidized insurance entitlement. Naturally, the fine print goes on to describe one of the largest tax increases for health care in history, too.

This new ObamaCare bargain would for the first time apply the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax to "interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents," so-called passive income that we are told includes capital gains, though the latter wasn't explicitly mentioned in the proposal. This antigrowth investment tax would apply to singles earning more than $200,000 and joint filers over $250,000 and comes on top of the Senate's 0.9-percentage-point increase in the payroll tax, which would bring the combined employee-employer share to 3.8%.

Is Disillusionment with Media-Created Obama Causing People to Snap?

Interesting:

 Big Journalism

So, here’s the pertinent question, the question our drowning Obama groupies in the MSM do not dare to ask: Is disillusionment with Obama causing people to snap and commit acts of violence?

It’s a good question, born of common sense.

If there was a single characteristic that defined the Obama campaign followers in 2008, it was an adolescent fawning the likes this country has never seen. There were the creepy fainting women in teenybopper crush mode wherever Obama went. There were the so-called intelligentsia speaking of a man who, to them, seemed more like a god, a savior, an uber-competent of downright immortal stature, purely obsequious observations based on Obama’s postage-stamp-sized resume, his fondness for arugula and GQ looks.

And, who can forget the woman at an Obama rally who prattled on about how when he was elected she wouldn’t have to worry about putting gas in her car or paying her mortgage:

Republican Blizzard on the Generic Ballot

Interesting,  it's still early in the political season, but...

Margin of Error

It would take a major turn of events for the Democrats to hold onto the House of Representatives. There I said it. Why the confidence on Republicans gaining 40 seats and getting to the 218 seats needed to control the House?

The generic House ballot is tilting to Republicans in ways not seen... ever. Or as Michael Barone put it, the Republican margin currently seen is "historically unprecedented". To those unfamiliar with the generic ballot, it is the question asked on national surveys that goes something like this "If the elections for Congress were being held today, which party's candidate would you vote for in your Congressional district?" I have often (in my own head) questioned the usefulness of the generic ballot because House elections are held in districts not nationally, and surveys are only getting at most a few respondents from each district for each survey. But the fact of the matter is that vast majority of research indicates (see Charles Franklin, Matthew Shugart, and the Pew Research Center among others) that if you properly use the results from the question, you can get a pretty good idea of what is going to happen.

Religion Among the Millenials

Opportunity:

Op-Ed Columnist - Spirit Quest - NYTimes.com

A report entitled “Religion Among the Millennials” produced by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life and released this week found that one in four people 18 to 29 years old are unaffiliated with a religion. But that by no means makes them all atheists or agnostics. While there are always religious people among the unaffiliated, the numbers are significantly higher among the younger unaffiliated crowd. While they are less likely than those unaffiliated and older than them to believe in God, they are more likely to believe in life after death, heaven and hell, and miracles.

So, anyone laboring under the delusion that the generation weaned on MTV would move us closer to being weaned of an abnormally high level of religiosity — at least when compared with other industrialized countries — may have to keep waiting.

In fact, on some measures, the data suggest that these so-called millennials may be more spiritually thirsty than older generations.

Obama, the Democrats and Homosexuals ... Oh My!

Very good.  HT:  Mark W

Christianpost.com

Our politics flow out of our worldview which flows out of our theology which flows out of our relationship with Christ. So if we want to truly influence politics then we must, first and foremost, influence others to embrace Jesus as their Savior. Then we must plunge them into a passionate pursuit of God through prayer, worship and obedience to His Word.

The real boogeyman is not the President, a political party, the homosexuals or an Alaskan icon in high heels who can see Russia from her front porch. Satan is the real boogeyman. And I believe that he is doing everything he can in his power to get Christians distracted. For the right-leaning Christians (like me) he is trying to get us to worship at the altar of Glenn Beck rather than Jesus Christ. He is seeking to get us to hate the President instead of pray for him. He is trying to get us to seek a political solution to a spiritual problem.

Cook: Health Care Is Obama's Iraq

Interesting:

National Journal Online -- Insider Interviews -- Cook: Health Care Is Obama's Iraq

The thing that I think a lot of Democratic strategists are really concerned about is that some of these districts are going to be gone for a generation or more. I mean, they're not coming back. They're ones that had somehow managed to hang on in Democratic hands even after the Democratic Party fell out of favor in a lot of the South. But once they slip away, I'm not sure they're coming back.

NJ: Are there areas where you might see a Republican nominee who is too far to the right?

Cook: Where you have Republican incumbents who may have voted for TARP, you're going to have some potential probleme spots. Part of it is, we're reaching here a little bit. Because, yes, the Republican Party, they've got some huge brand problems, where their brand got badly damaged during the eight years of President Bush and the six years the Republicans had the majority in Congress.... But if I had a choice of the Republican Party's problems right now or the Democratic Party's problems, I think you could triple the Republican Party's problems and I'd still rather have their problems than the problems facing Democrats.

What women want in 2010: A husband who'll be the main breadwinner

Once you have something you sometimes realize you don't really want it:

 Mail Online

Young mothers are turning their backs on high-powered careers to raise their children, a study has found.

Their mothers, or even grandmothers, lived through a time when women fought for full-time work and better pay.

But today's generation is returning to the traditional values of home and family - and looking to men to be the breadwinners.

Amy Bishop linked to the Tea Party!

Well, actually not so much:

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

There is no actual link between Alabama-Hunstville shooter Amy Bishop and the Tea Party movement.

By all accounts, Bishop was extremely liberal and a huge Obama fan (to the point of being described by someone who knew her as being obsessed with Obama).

But in keeping with the attempt to smear as crazy the Tea Party movement specifically, and anyone who is not a Democrat generally, now comes the inevitable attempt to link the Tea Parties and Bishop, centered on a charge of shared racism.

Mossad assassination clip

Long but fascinating:

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: The eerie yet riveting Mossad assassination clip

Foreigners cut Treasury stakes; rates could rise

If China dumping T bills causes the interest the US pays for its debt to go up we are in a world of hurt:

Foreigners cut Treasury stakes; rates could rise - Yahoo! Finance

A record drop in foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury bills in December sent a reminder that the government might have to pay higher interest rates on its debt to continue to attract investors.

China reduced its stake and lost the position it's held for more than a year as the largest foreign holder of Treasury debt. Japan retook the top spot as it boosted its Treasury holdings.

The Treasury Department said foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury bills fell by a record $53 billion in December. That topped the previous record drop of $44.5 billion in April 2009.

Private analysts, though, were split over the significance of the decline. Some doubted that the drop in foreign holdings of short-term Treasuries signified growing unease about holding U.S. debt. They noted that net purchases of longer-term Treasury debt rose in December by $70 billion.

But other economists saw the decline as a warning signal. They fear that foreigners, especially the Chinese, have begun to worry about record-high U.S. budget deficits and are looking to diversify their holdings.

Stunning colour film of 1920s London...

 How to be a Retronaut

The Open Road London (1927)

Boeing-377 "Stratocruiser"

The Child Molester Scandal That Isn’t: What the MSM Doesn’t Report

Scary:

Big Journalism

In 2004, Hofstra University professor Dr. Carol Shakeshaft published a report for the United States Department of Education titled “Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature.” It was presented to Congress as part of the No Child Left Behind Act. In it, Shakeshaft stated:

As a group, these studies present a wide range of estimates of the percentage of U.S. students subject to sexual misconduct by school staff and vary from 3.7 to 50.3 percent. Because of its carefully drawn sample and survey methodology, the AAUW report that nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career presents the most accurate data available at this time.

According to a study she did of abuse complaints against Catholic priests over a five decade period she concluded that “…the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”

Professor in Chief

Oh my, apparently "professor" is racist:

Inside Higher Ed

Watching the “professor Obama” label bandied about again, one of the president’s longtime mentors says he doubts it will gain traction outside of Tea Party rallies. Taken to its logical conclusion, the message just doesn’t make sense, says Charles J. Ogletree, a Harvard professor who has known Obama since he was a law student there.

“I think anyone who examines it closely and carefully will see this type of criticism of Obama will ultimately be counterproductive,” Ogletree says. “Do you want to tell your children we don’t want smart people in government?”

Ogletree, founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, says he sees the “professor” label as a thinly veiled attack on Obama’s race. Calling Obama “the professor” walks dangerously close to labeling him “uppity,” a term with racial overtones that has surfaced in the political arena before, Ogletree said. Describing his divisive confirmation hearings as a “circus,” Justice Clarence Thomas called the proceedings “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas.…” It is perhaps ironic, then, that Ogletree, who represented Anita Hill when she made harassment allegations against Thomas in 1991, now sees a bit of the “uppity” label being placed on Obama.

Sarah Palin -- take this populist with a pitch seriously

Very interesting:

Broder: Salt Lake Tribune

The snows that obliterated Washington last week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.

Her lengthy Saturday night keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday morning talk show circuit with Fox News' Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game -- a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself.

This was not the first time that Palin has impressed me. I gave her high marks for her vice presidential acceptance speech in St. Paul. But then, and always throughout that campaign, she was laboring to do more than establish her own place. She was selling a ticket headed by John McCain against formidable Democratic opposition and burdened by the legacy of the Bush administration.

China PLA officers urge economic punch against U.S.

This doesn't sound good:

 Reuters

Senior Chinese military officers have proposed that their country boost defense spending, adjust PLA deployments, and possibly sell some U.S. bonds to punish Washington for its latest round of arms sales to Taiwan.

Core Chicago Team Sinking Obama Presidency

Very interesting:

The Washington Note

Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief Edward Luce has written a granularly informed insider account about those who hold the keys to the inner most sanctum of Obama Land -- Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.

rahm-emanuel-mtp.jpgIt's a vital article -- a brave one -- that interviews "dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington".

Poll: Special interests more influential under Obama

Hope and Change:

Washington Times

Contrary to President Obama's promises, voters say special interests have more influence on the political process now than they did a year ago, according to a new poll.

The poll, paid for by groups looking to curb the Supreme Court's recent campaign finance ruling, found that majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say special interests have increased their influence since the president took office, and they say Mr. Obama has not done enough to fight back.

"People think special interests are dominant," said Stan Greenberg, a leading Democratic pollster who worked with Republican pollster Mark McKinnon.

Mr. Obama promised to usher in a new era of government responsible to voters, but back-room negotiations over the health-care bill, and the president's own broken promise to televise those negotiations on C-SPAN, have dented his credibility.

How Obama got Keynes wrong

Very interesting:

How Obama got Keynes wrong - Feb. 5, 2010

The Obama White House likes to say that the theories of John Maynard Keynes form the foundation for its fiscal policies. Most notably, it draws upon the legendary British economist's idea of spending big to pull out of a recession.

But one economist says the administration has gotten Keynes only half right. Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon is one of the most influential monetarists of the past 50 years. He has served in the Department of the Treasury under President Kennedy and on the Council of Economic Advisors during the Reagan Administration. He also authored the book, Keynes's Monetary Theory: A Different Interpretation.

While the Obama team is laying out huge sums of money, Meltzer says it's neglecting a key part of Keynes' plan: You can't run up a debt without a way to cover it.

Dem. Ill. lt. gov. candidate exits race amid furor

Good grief, only in Illinois:

Dem. Ill. lt. gov. candidate exits race amid furor

The Democratic nominee for Illinois lieutenant governor has dropped out of the race less than a week after winning the nomination amid a political uproar about his past.

Scott Lee Cohen announced his decision Sunday night at a Chicago bar.

The pawn broker and owner of a cleaning supplies company won the nomination Tuesday. Since then, it has become widely know that he was accused of abusing his ex-wife and holding a knife to the throat of an ex-girlfriend.

The girlfriend herself had been charged with prostitution. He also admits using steroids in the past.

Amnesty International is ‘damaged’ by Taliban link

I wish this was a surprise, but it isn't:

Times Online

A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.

Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.

In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.

Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.

New errors in IPCC climate change report

Read the whole thing:

Telegraph

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report is supposed to be the world’s most authoritative scientific account of the scale of global warming.

But this paper has discovered a series of new flaws in it including:

Obama: 'She insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt'

Obama's Theme:  It's all about me...

 Washington Examiner

Yes, those are the words of the president, last night at the Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington. After listing his administration's accomplishments and vowing that "our most urgent task is job creation," Obama pledged to keep fighting for a national health care system. "We knew this was hard," Obama said. And then he described a letter he received from a campaign worker who suffered from breast cancer and has since died:

I got a letter -- I got a note today from one of my staff -- they forwarded it to me -- from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn't have insurance. She couldn't afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.

Many observers have noted that the president often seems extraordinarily self-referential. It's all about him, they say. But even those critics might be a little taken aback by the "buried in an Obama t-shirt" remark. Is it really that much about him?

Countdown begins for end of Keith Olbermann's 'Countdown'?

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy:

 Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

Remember Keith Olbermann?

He was the one-time must-see anti-Bush ranter who helped rescue MSNBC (yes, it's still on at night) from even worse oblivion years ago.
Well, quietly last month while no one was looking, hardly anyone was watching Keith Olbermann anymore.

The guy, who's even apparently tried to get some Sarah Palin-like eyeglasses, is now forced to leap over-the-top on ex-state senators like Scott Brown and Tuesday's worst person, Fox News' Glenn Beck. Beck is the successful talker with the perfect haircut for radio. Like most Americans, he wasn't watching Keith.

Backdoor taxes to hit middle class

This is the story that Reuters pulled earlier today:

Reuters Pulls Backdoor Tax Story? | Middle Class Tax On The Way? | dumpthedemocrats.com

The Obama administration’s plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families. In the 2010 budget tabled byPresident Barack Obamaon Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth. While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything

Really interesting:

Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything

The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily.

Liquid glass was invented in Turkey and the patent is held by Nanopool, a family-owned German company. Research on the product was carried out at the Saarbrücken Institute for New Materials. Nanopool is already in negotiations in the UK with a number of companies and with the National Health Service, with a view to its widespread adoption.

The liquid glass spray produces a water-resistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable. The coating is environmentally harmless and non-toxic, and easy to clean using only water or a simple wipe with a damp cloth. It repels bacteria, water and dirt, and resists heat, UV light and even acids. UK project manager with Nanopool, Neil McClelland, said soon almost every product you purchase will be coated with liquid glass.

The Obama Spell Is Broken

Very good:

WSJ.com

Mr. Obama's self-regard, and his reading of his mandate, overwhelmed all restraint. The age-old American balance between a relatively small government and a larger role for the agencies of civil society was suddenly turned on its head. Speed was of the essence to the Obama team and its allies, the powerful barons in Congress. Better ram down sweeping social programs—a big liberal agenda before the people stirred to life again.

Progressives pressed for a draconian attack on the workings of our health care, and on the broader balance between the state and the marketplace. The economic stimulus, ObamaCare, the large deficits, the bailout package for the automobile industry—these, and so much more, were nothing short of a fundamental assault on the givens of the American social compact.

And then there was the hubris of the man at the helm: He was everywhere, and pronounced on matters large and small. This was political death by the teleprompter.