Chautauqua

As we were wrapping up the Chautauqua Summer Arts Weekend, the participants in the Chautauqua Workshop for Political Poetry seemed to be working feverishly to complete a group project. Since we’re so proud of our members’ work, we present here the fruits of the Political Poetry group’s labors, a piece they’ve chosen to call, “Rhetorical Robbery”.  Please join me in extending thanks and congratulations to this industrious group for giving us this rhapsodic rune to ruin.

And so, without further ado:

Rhetorical Robbery

If Cash for Clunkers weren’t so foolish,
We’d be driving Ramblers.
Since rationed healthcare is so ghoulish,
Sick folks would be gamblers.

From auto parts to body parts,
Barack has all the answers.
Until it comes to wheels and hearts,
To brakes and common cancers.

“We’ll give you cars and cure your ills.
And this I guarantee:
We’ll run GM, prescribe your pills,
And do it all for free.”

Obamanomics draws the loop
But don’t a circle call it.
It panders to each int’rest group
While stealing from each wallet.

The loop that’s drawn will only close
When we’re all queued for service.
We’ll all hold hands, while lackeys doze,
And we become more nervous.

So, keep your car and keep your doc,
To lose them is a crime.
And wake up now. It’s not too late.
But we don’t have much time.

The Chautauqua Center for Musical Activism recently concluded a project, inspired by the contemporary political climate. We undertook to revise “America the Beautiful”, amending the lyrics  initially composed by Katharine Lee Bates, while retaining the original score by Samuel A. Ward. We imagine this new composition will be performed unless and until it is deemed free speech, fishy, or otherwise in opposition to the present administration’s totalitarian agendas of any stripe. Then it will disappear like an anti-Stalinist dissident.

All together now:

Obamica the Beautiful

O beautiful for specious lies,
Audacious hope in vain,
For purple prose and promises
Deceitful and insane!

Obmica! Obamica!
God shed His grace on we
Who now endure your fatal cure
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for union fraud
Whose rife corruptions spread
From auto plants to public schools
To bleed incentive dead.

Obamica! Obamica!
You revel in self-awe.
In your new role you now extol
A mockery of law.

O beautiful for healthcare schemes
That tax the nation blind,
That leave us sick and doctorless,
But leave your pockets lined.

Obamica! Obamica!
You have us by the cubes.
But don’t expect us to accede
While we go down the tubes.

O beautiful for patriot dreams,
For cherishing what’s ours,
For challenging your senseless schemes,
Foreshortening your powers.

Obamica! Obamica!
Be careful where you delve,
Or you’ll be outside looking in
By year two-thousand-twelve.

An old adage says, “Those who can’t do, teach.” The Chautauqua Center for Entrepreneurial Initiative espouses a corollary dictum: those who can’t make a living doing something constructive gripe about those who are making a living doing something constructive. Some jamoke named Glenn Greenwald is the latest in a rash of whiny nincompoops and public nuisances to whom that dictum applies. One could hardly catalog Goofy Glenn’s myriad delusions — nor would any constructive person spend the time — but here’s a beauty: he’s the author of a book called, How Would a Patriot Act? which is billed as a “critique” of the Bush administration’s use of executive power. What in the world would Gutless Glenn know about patriotism?

Pop Quiz #1: For fifty percent of your grade, do you imagine this clown will write a critique of the Obama administration, even though the topic is rife enough to require multiple volumes to cover the abuses of executive power in just the first six months of Obama the Omnipotent’s reign?

• Hint #1: Groveling Glenn’s a lawyer, too, just his like his buddy, Barack the Blameless.
• Hint #2: Not on your life.

The latest bug up Galled Glenn’s balmy bum is the fact that General Electric, which owns MSNBC, wants to muzzle Keith “The Crank” Olbermann. Who wouldn’t? The Crank hasn’t had a coherent articulation since he left ESPN. It seems MSNBC wants Olbermann to tone down his demented diatribes against Bill O’Reilly. Love O’Reilly or hate him, The O’Reilly Factor is the most-watched program in all of cable news. Why? Because O’Reilly makes sense to more people than does the lunatic Olbermann. Why wouldn’t GE want to keep the feathers of millions of prospective customers unruffled? But that logic escapes Gloomy Glenn. His beef is that he sees The Crank’s ranting and NBC’s corporate interests as being “unrelated”. Here’s a slice of his peculiar naivete:

[Olbermann's muzzling] was motivated by the belief that such criticism was hurting the unrelated corporate interests of GE [then Glenn abandons logical connections to write] … A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April [if the meeting was overrun by GE shareholders, how did MSNBC get unrelated to GE's corporate interests?] … So here we have yet another example — perhaps the most glaring yet — of the corporations that own our largest media outlets controlling and censoring the content of their news organizations based on the unrelated interests of the parent corporation.

Whew! I guess I feel better about the fact that Groping Glenn is clutching at straws to write incongruous gibberish for Salon, rather than trying to interpret the law for a corporation, the profit motives and employment potential of which he’d never understand. And I know I feel better for every poor schmoe he’s not representing in court. But come on. The dude’s 42 years old, and he’s this clueless?

Pop Quiz #2: For the remaining fifty percent of your grade, of which of the following concepts is Green Glenn utterly unaware:

1. Corporate policy
2. Organizational codes of conduct
3. Employees having to abide by 1 and 2
4. Any cerebral phenomena other than his feelings
5. All of the above.

Okay. So, I took it easy on you. You’re welcome.

One last question, which isn’t part of any exam but should have been part of Guarded Glenn’s education: How does a guy like this manage to remain so sheltered? I was introduced to the ways of the world and the reality of obeying rules at the age of three:

My family was going to the shore for a vacation. My father told me to stand on the sidewalk, which rose a foot or so above the curb, while he put my younger brother in the car. That was the rule. He always put my brother in first, then he lifted me in. Not this time. As soon as he turned his back, I took a step toward the embankment. I lost my balance, fell forward like a tree, went forehead first onto the edge of the door sill, and my noggin was as broken as the rule. We detoured to the emergency room on the way to the shore; and I received my first stitches, my first lesson in trial and error, and my first painful taste of breaking the rules. But that error didn’t keep me from trying again. And the breaking of rules neither eliminated them nor made me unfailingly heed them; although, the pain of that first break did teach me to respect them and to know them before I broke them.

Creating requires rule-breaking now and then. If you’re not creating, you’re waiting. If you’re not making, you’re taking. I have no idea what people like Gun-shy Glenn are waiting for. I have no idea why he doesn’t realize the buck Jeff Immelt is making for GE trumps the buck The Crank is taking from Jeff Imelt. But he doesn’t.

So, like all of the whiny waiters and takers we study here at the Chautauqua Center, he exercises his last resort: he blames it on the buck.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E.B. White

If you don’t think the world’s become a giant soap opera — in large part due to the indiscriminate nature of electronic media, which, while ubiquitous and unending, still relies on the old stand-by of sensationalism to draw attention — you’re not really paying attention. Ironic, isn’t it? With the help of electronic media, the world’s become a soap opera because, along with sensationalism, modernity now operates on two abiding doctrines: popularity and celebrity. Those doctrines have replaced two others: the rule of law and minding our now business. As a result, we’d rather be saved than to save. And we’d rather savor sensationalism than do anything else. Witness the evanescent evolution of The New World Superman.

In our last episode, Gary “Area 51” McKinnon was fighting extradition to these here United States. Area 51 was hoping not to face the music for having hacked into 97 U.S. government computers in the altruistically humanitarian effort to steal the formula for environmentally pure UFO fuel. Because the circumstances of that episode were nowhere near absurd enough to satisify the lust for inanity and the existential ennui of our viewers, our writers have upped the ante by extending this story into one of U.S. politics as world theater. This serves to expand our story line and its subsequent plot possibilities ad infinitum. At the same time, it creates burlesque on a global scale — giving the charade of U.S. politics a global sweep and indicating the length of the strides our hero, Barack the Beknighted (BTB), is willing to take to save the world, as long as the world will continue to adulate him and let him do whatever he wants.

You may remember that, in a back story introduced during the Area 51 episode, BTB deigned to invite a beat cop, a Harvard law scholar, and Joe the Blowhard (JTB) to the White House to settle a matter of local ordinance and racial ignorance over a glass of suds. The gesture wasn’t intended to demonstrate BTB’s ego, his deference to a fellow Harvard law professor, his lack of a sense of prioritization suitable for the President of the United States, or that he’d gladly let his domestic and foreign duties go to Hell in favor of a Rose Garden photo opp. Rather, it was meant to be evidence of the fact that BTB can be all things to all people all the time.

BTB is the New Superhero for the New World. He’s the President of the United States as executive agent, sole agent, supreme agent. Yes, he’s Super Agent: faster than a creeping legislature, more powerful than the Constitution imagined, able to leap tall tales at a single bound. He’s Super Pol! Yes, it’s Super Pol, strange visitor from another … oh, no you don’t. We’re not touching that one with a ten-foot pole.

Anyway, in today’s exciting continuation, the mother of Area 51 appealed to our hero to save her son from the evils of  … well … the law. Speaking outside the British High Court, Area 51’s mum, Janis Sharp, said:

[Gary was] naive enough to admit to computer misuse without having a lawyer and without one being present. [Editor's note: It's only a good idea to tell the truth sometimes -- and sometimes only with a lawyer present -- especially if you know the law, have broken the law, and don't like the law.] We are heartbroken. If the law says it’s fair to destroy someone’s life in this way then it’s a bad law … He’s very ill, he’s got really bad chest pains, it’s affected him emotionally, mentally, every way, he’s terrified … Obama wouldn’t have this … He doesn’t want the first guy extradited for computer misuse to be … a UFO guy … I’m just praying, please hear us, Obama, because I know you would do the right thing.

That’s right. Janis Sharp, a woman who is not a U.S. citizen and, so, not a (legally) loyal subject of BTB, knows the former law professor has enough disdain for the law that he will simply ignore it to do the emotionally popular thing (see Wagoner, Rick). She knows BTB is above (well, of course he’s above it, he can fly) and bigger than the law. She knows that if it will curry favor, win votes, distract attention from his mathematically impossible and consequentially disastrous economic fiascoes, and pump up the ego that is the source of his super powers, he’ll do it.

Most important, she knows viewers will ignore his flouting the rule of law because … well … because he’s going to save us, darn it.

Stay tuned.

A writer for The Hartford Courant, Helen Ubiñas, has attracted considerable feedback from readers about a recent column, questioning whether redemption (I suspect she meant atonement or forgiveness) was possible for two suspects in a horrific rape/murder/arson in Cheshire, Connecticut, two years ago. That column appears here. The column seemed largely misunderstood, chiefly because it seemed largely not to have a point. (Ms. Ubiñas muddied the waters by seeming to advocate an eye for an eye, while invoking the prospect of redemption and the “limits” of her God. Her God was unavailable for comment.) She followed that up by generating still more feedback with today’s column, a kind of apologia/backtracking/paean to peace for the victims families that appears to have gotten her deeper in the soup than Campbell’s.

But there is a point being lost in the all the emotion of this discussion. Yes, we all have personal reactions to capital punishment – the taking of a life by the law, under the law. But it’s not a personal decision. It’s a legal/societal one. Capital punishment, beyond the actual punishment, was intended to be a deterrent to capital crime. In countries in which it is enacted swiftly and decisively, it is. But it’s not an effective deterrent in the U.S. because perpetrators have more “rights” than victims. That’s not a judgment. It’s an observation of fact. Check our murder rates.

We’ve abandoned the purpose of capital punishment, just as we have so many other fundaments of our ostensible social “order”. It’s another conservative/liberal dichotomy. Conservatives believe our imperfections must be subject to the rule of law to keep the order and maintain equal opportunity. The logic and rule of law stand above all. Liberals believe our imperfections can be pandered to by inventing every individual “right” imaginable to monopolize power under the government through the promise of equality. The emotions and “rights” of the individual stand above all. Chaos be damned.

It’s harder to serve the rule of law (social order) than it is to claim our individual “rights” (equality, rather than equal opportunity). So, we are where we are. If Ms. Ubiñas’s God is involved at all – or anyone elses’s for that matter – it’s clear he has an endless imagination and brutally keen senses of humor and irony.

If he’s waiting for us to help ourselves, it’s a good thing his calendar is eternity.

I’ve noticed an alarming narrowing in the gap between realism and alarmism. Or is that a realistic narrowing? It’s hard to tell. Given our increasing psychological perversity – and our increasingly indiscriminate senses of entitlement – we’re all but destroying our capacity for semantic nuance. For example, as a matter of engaging in discussion, you used to be able to tell people the truth, even if they didn’t like it. If you tell people a truth they don’t like today, they’ll say you’re being sarcastic. If you tell people a truth they really don’t like, they’ll say you’re being mean. If you tell people a truth that has to do with taking responsibility for themselves – or engaging in something constructive – they’ll say you’re being (forgive my language) conservative. You’re better off lying through your teeth, especially if you’re promising them something for nothing. (See Obama, Barack.)

Along with abdicating responsibility for any kind of semantic maturity, we’ve developed a corollary knack for overlooking empirical evidence and ignoring our senses. We used to think that if it looks, walks, swims, flies, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Likewise, if we saw something that had all the hallmarks of a disaster in the making, we’d brace for the ensuing disaster – or work to prevent it. But we don’t think that way anymore. We’re too enamored of our entitlements to be preoccupied by discernment. That’s how and why, in an effort to institute his own power-mongering agenda, Barack the Betrayer is attempting to railroad through as much specious legislation as possible. And to get that specious legislation enacted before we wake up, he’s resorting to strong-arm tactics in government extortion. What? You mean that handsome guy who makes all those pretty speeches? Yes. Him. An excerpted example:

After Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., declared the Obama administration’s stimulus spending plan ineffective and urged a halt to further stimulus spending, the White House dispatched four Cabinet secretaries – Transportation’s Ray LaHood, Agriculture’s Tom Vilsack, Housing and Urban Development’s Shaun Donovan, Interior’s Ken Salazar – to write letters to Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer enumerating every dime of federal monies that would no longer flow to her state if Sen. Kyl had his way. As LaHood snarkily put it to Gov. Brewer, “If you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know.” What did the White House expect the governor to do next? Make Sen. Kyl an offer he couldn’t refuse? Or, as Mark Steyn, detecting the whiff of extortion in the air, asked: “Why not just break his (Kyl’s) legs in the Senate parking lot?”

To put what follows in context, please find a copy of Stephen Fox’s book, Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth Century America, referenced here. Since it’s out of print, you’ll have to do some Internet digging – or some serious rummaging through used-book stores. While you’re looking, here are the kinds of naivete-shattering realities you’ll find teed up in the book. There are no accidents or coincidences. Politicians like Barack the Bandit are supported by unions. Politicians and unions are corrupted by organized crime. That’s why:

• Labor unions typically and historically foster violence. The Center for Union Facts compiles evidence about the political and criminal activities of the labor movement in the United States.
• The National Institute for Labor Relations Research has maintained a catalog of union violence since 1975.
• The Heritage Foundation conducted exhaustive research on the effect of unions on business, industry, and the economy.

Well, that’s all a bunch of exaggerated hooey, right? Wrong. It’s a duck. We need to call it one.

Speaking of fowl, while Barack the Banty was crowing about saving General Motors, he was handing the fox the keys to the chicken coop. As a result, GM will now be managing to UAW demands, not to market demands and certainly not to consumer demands. Because Barack the Brazen knows the effectiveness of strong-arm tactics (see Politics, Chicago), we’re now enjoying thuggish coercion on healthcare. We’re celebrating criminal misrepresentation of the stimulus. We’re a few short steps from bringing home the kind of organized violence that’s doing a world of good for this U.S. plant in France. And we’re so determined not to say this thing that looks, walks, swims, flies, and quacks like a duck is a duck that our prospective perils have to be pointed out to us by our friends north of the border.

If you don’t think you’re about to lose something valuable — and if you don’t think that loss will be all but irretrievable — ask yourself this: does the bully tell you what he’s going to do as he’s approaching — and before he swipes your ice cream cone? Here’s a hint: HELL NO!

Big Brother Barack’s keeping it real. But that’s not the same as keeping it realistic. And it’s definitely alarming.

We ignore it at our own peril.

What follows is actual correspondence between yours truly and his duly elected representative. Not a word has been altered. Names have been deleted to lessen the strain on credulity:

Dear Senator X,

Please oppose the Employee Free Choice Act.  It will not be free.  It will cost an unaffordable measure or our liberty.  It will not constitute choice.  It will institutionalize coercion and corruption.

The secret ballot is a tenet of American democracy and privacy.  This legislation usurps that tenet, eliminating a secret ballot overseen by the NLRB and placing undue and unwarranted power in the hands of union organizers.  It’s hard to imagine legislation deliberately leaving employees and employers vulnerable to those who respect the interests of neither.  If the role of the federal government is to support that kind of usurpation, I have an entire life as a U.S. citizen to re-examine.

Federally supervised, private-ballot elections ensure a union has the support of a majority of employees.  In contrast, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled: “It would be difficult to imagine a more unreliable method of ascertaining the real wishes of employees than a card check.”  The Second Circuit ruled: “It is beyond dispute that the secret ballot election is a more accurate reflection of the employees’ true desires than a check of authorization cards collected at the behest of a union organizer.”  The Sixth Circuit ruled: “An election is the preferred method of determining the choice by employees of a collective bargaining representative.”

Why in the world would Congress fix something that ain’t broke?

As my elected representative, please oppose the Employee Free Choice Act and support the Secret Ballot Protection Act.

Thank you for doing right things.

My pal’s reply:

Thank you for contacting me regarding union rights for workers. I appreciate hearing your views on this important matter.

I understand and respect your concerns about this issue. In my view, when workers are able to play a role in negotiating their wages and working conditions, the result is fewer work-related injuries, better employee morale, and greater efficiency.  I believe that labor unions have long been instrumental in strengthening the American middle class and improving the lives of millions of working families by ensuring basic workplace protections, decent and livable wages, and secure pension and retirement benefits.

While your reservations are understandable, I am a cosponsor of Senate bill 560, the Employee Free Choice Act, because in my view it will better enable employees to exercise their right to form or join a union. Rather than letting employers decide the process by which a union is certified, the Employee Free Choice Act would shift that determination to the employees, who can choose either majority sign-up or a secret ballot election.

I am also supportive of the Employee Free Choice Act’s provisions that would deter employers from wrongfully terminating employees who favor unionization. While the great majority of employers act responsibly and treat their workers well, there are still many well-documented cases of worker abuse … that are of great concern to me. I believe that the reforms of S. 560 represent reasonable policy that would promote a safer, fairer workplace for employees, regardless of their sentiments towards forming or joining a union.

Thank you again for contacting me. If you would like to stay in touch with me on this and other issues of importance, please visit my website … and subscribe to receive my regular e-mail issue alerts. Please do not hesitate to contact me again if I can be of assistance to you in any way.

Since that made it clear my initial correspondence had been neither read nor understood, I replied:

Dear Senator X,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my correspondence.

Out of respect for the time constraints imposed by your schedule, I apologize for not having made the point of my earlier correspondence more clear.  I have no concerns about the specific right of workers to choose a union through a “card check” process.  Rather, I have grave concerns about the specific right of workers NOT to choose a union and, by extension, their right not to be coerced, manipulated, or victimized thereby.

I’m only concerned because labor unions already have the power to annul employees’ freedom of choice.  FDR and your forebears in Congress ensured infringement on workers’ ability to work for — and to make their own agreements with — willing employers in 1935 with the passage of the Wagner Act.  That’s why Arthur Goldberg, a former attorney for the United Steelworkers Union, JFK’s secretary of labor, and former Supreme Court justice wrote in 1956, “Technically speaking, any labor union is a monopoly in the limited sense that it eliminates competition between workingmen for the available jobs in a particular plant or industry.”  It’s also why unionization in the private sector dropped from 17 million in 1970 to 8.8 million in 2002 — and is lower now.  Like bobby socks and hula hoops, the time for labor unions — except as channels for corruption from government and organized crime — has passed.  If you can find a copy of Stephen Fox’s book, Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth-Century America, you’ll understand two things: why S.560 is a disastrously bad idea and why Fox’s book is out of print.  (Hint: Neither government nor organized crime wants you to read it.)

I know I’m getting sentimental in my advancing age.  But I really miss the secret ballot, especially for those who harbor illusions of democracy and free choice.  Those illusions get harder and harder to sustain.  Then again, I’m a guy who’s nowhere near ready to admit — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — that we’ve entered the golden age of political promise, adulation from the gullible, and retribution for the empirically astute.

I’m all for doing things right.  But I ask you again to reward my vote by doing right things.  Please oppose the Employee Free Choice Act of 2009.

Thank you.

So much for elective representation. Is Don Quixote in the house?

After watching our commander-in-chief’s bravura performance of the famous political play, Glib Obliqueness, which he staged in lieu of a press conference yesterday, a little snooping seemed in order. After all, if he’s presently using more smoke and mirrors than a Kiss concert to conceal the fact that the preponderance of his plans – from car care to healthcare – constitute open-ended promises with closed-ended funding, the buck has to stop somewhere, right? It does, indeed. And it cashes out in a simple question:

If you had something to give and it were taken from you, would you give more?

If your answer to the question is no, should this be surprising? The fact that charitable giving is down is not the result of a lack of means or a suddenly hardened spirit. It’s a matter of vocabulary and psychology. If people give what they choose to give, that’s called giving. When they see the positive results of their giving, they incline to give more. If people have taken from them what they otherwise would have chosen to give, that’s called stealing. When they feel the corresponding senses of indignation and violation, they incline to be protective of whatever they might have left. Having what otherwise would have been your charitable contributions taken by the government is the rough equivalent of having your paper-route earnings stolen by larcenous parents, then having them tell you to cough up some money for the collection plate in church so others can be helped – and to cover their share while you’re at it. If someone’s getting the free ride, it may as well be them. After all, they’re the adults in this relationship. And yesterday’s rendering of Glib Obliqueness was about nothing, if not parentally arbitrary condescension.

This comment from the article cited above warrants particular note:

Most charities were faring adequately in 2008 until the final quarter of the year – traditionally the quarter that brings the most donations, said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The downward trend has continued into 2009, Palmer said, “and that means a lot of groups are doing pretty badly.”

No mystery there. At the height of the 2008 election season, the panic was on. Belts tightened. They became tourniquets after Inauguration Day when our new commander-in-chief showed no reluctance whatever at putting both of his hands in our pockets and telling us he had better ideas for their contents than we did. Then he let us know he’d not only be propping up failing businesses with our money, we’d better be ready to support unions when they passed the plates, just to make sure the fix not only was in but that those failed businesses remained corrupt.

While we’re on the subject of picked pockets, you won’t want to forget vocabulary when it comes to the healthcare our commander-in-chief is going to provide for us (at the expense of an indefinite number of subsequent generations). An admonition apropos of business and politics says, “Never believe anything until it’s officially denied.” And we’re getting proof aplenty from the administrations minions that Obama Care (under the guise of Kennedy Care) is going to cost us plenty. This lady contends Dr. Barack’s cure will never take public money. Right. She seems disarmingly careful not to define her terms. The definition of never is self-evident. Precisely what she means by public is a little more squishy. And this shameless shaman of chicanery contends that whatever it is that’s actually going on (he didn’t say) constitutes buzzwords. Buzzwords? If the money for a government-created “public healthcare option” is NOT going to come from public funds (taxes), where will it come from? Christina Romer’s not saying. My guess is we won’t get a straight answer from our friend the Mortgage Man, either.

But the tab may be coming due for all the free lunches, and our commander-in-chief’s rhetorical flights of fancy may be coming home to roost. Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” You’d think somewhere, sometime in his schooling – between classes in law and theatrical pyrotechnics – Papa Barack would have had time to learn that one. He didn’t. Fooling 17,869,542 people in the 2008 popular election only emboldened him and made him ignore Honest Abe’s advice all the more.

You can be sure there’s trouble brewing when The New York Times comes out in opposition to anything on the Democratic agenda. Given the prospects of going out of business, perhaps The Gray Lady has opted to be objective for a change, or – dare I say it? – to publish some semblance of truth, especially since they don’t have George Bush to kick around anymore? Nah! More likely this is an errant attack of common sense that happened to slip by the editorial board. We probably can look forward to news of David Brooks being pilloried in an upcoming edition. And if our commander-in-chief’s poll numbers are really tanking by then, they’ll probably pin the decline on Brooks. After all, what good is barnyard reporting, if you don’t have a goat around?

But I digress. The point is it would take some truly perverse spin on Stockholm Syndrome to make us continue our loyal adulation for a presidential pilferer who wants to tell us that emptying our pockets at the point of a figurative gun will create more jobs, give us better healthcare, and allow us to contribute more charitably to the greater societal good. The Giving USA Foundation knows better. The polls know better. Even The New York Times knows better. The test will be to see if voters have learned better, beginning with the 2010 mid-terms.

See you at the polls.