Who says these young people aren’t mixing cold reality with their idealism?

Grounded in history, these civic-minded young activists understand the best traditions of America.

Armed with astute policy understanding and a clear, laser-like vision of reform, the 99%ers resemble no-one so much as the Founding Fathers.

The sad quality of corruption in the Obama Administration.

Back in 2008-2009, one of the few consolations for we who remained hopeless in that dawn of hope and change was the chance to see some world-class Chicago-style corruption. No more of this Halliburton-told-Cheney-not-to-worry-there’d-be-WMDs-piled-in-the-streets-of-Basra tomfoolery, none of this third-rate Arkansas sleight-of-hand with the cattle futures records.

No, we were gonna see some brazen Windy City politicking. Tony Rezko in charge of HUD. Secretary of Defense Herb “Hefty” Kowalski (formerly Ward 57 waste-hauling commissioner). Somebody’s ex-con uncle in charge of the FBI. Ambassador Blago.

But nearly three years into the reign of the Sun King, and the administration’s corruption is no more effective than its legitimate policies (though, given the way ObamaCare came into being, one could be forgiven for confusing the two).

"And right over there, Mr. President, is where we're gonna store that pile of cash for your re-election campaign."

It would be understandable were it just the president himself. He probably learned no more in Chicago than he did at Occidental, Columbia or the Harvard Law Review. (Constitutional scholar? Please.) The affirmative action didn’t end at graduation. They were stealing h

im elections while he concentrated on attaining the proper air of cool, analytical detachment and getting that pants crease right. About the only thing he seems to have taken from the City with the Big Shoulders is a community organizer’s fondness for mau mauing the opposition.

But he had some real pros around him: Red diaper baby and one-time Chicago Tribune “journalist” David Axelrod. Eric “Pardons” Holder, who helped give us one last Clinton scandal for the road. Heck, wasn’t Rahm “Dead Fish” Emanual Obama’s Chief of Staff? That guy that made $18 million in three years working for Freddie Mac (three years that coincided with a lot of accounting “irregularities”) and then walked away smelling … not like a dead fish?

What a disappointment. Look, nobody expects Democrat programs to work, but the party of Tammany Hall, Billy Bulger and the Daily Dynasty should be able to get corruption right. But this gang has proven hapless.

To wit:

New Black Panther Gate: Are you kidding? If Chicago didn’t invent voting “irregularities” it raised them to an art form. These guys couldn’t even make a simple voter intimidation case go away without publicity. The two New Black Panthers caught on film menacing white voters in Philadelphia during the 2008 election were small-time and, with all the unicorns and rainbows and butterflies unleashed by Obama’s election, should have been utterly forgotten. OK, the investigation was begun under Bush, and a career lawyer, J. Christian Adams, decided to get all ethical and blow the whistle on Holder’s … indifference to the case. But Great Scarface’s Ghost! have Chicagoans lost the

"And here's the best part, Blago: the guns will only kill Mexicans! It's not like they'll be used to shoot our ICE agents. Great idea, right?"

ability to shut up an inconvenient witness?

Fast & Furious: What has it come to when the party of government can’t manage to use government in a nefarious manner to help grow government? On the surface, it’s kind of a neat idea, and super-attractive to liberal statists: get the ATF to buy legal guns in America, ship them to drug gangs south of the border and be shocked-shocked! when they turn up in violent crimes down there. “Why, we need to severely curtail the sale of weapons in our country, so they don’t go to Mexican narco-terrorists.”

But, as the left never seems to learn, liberals aren’t as smart as they think, and the rest of us aren’t as dumb as they think. The wrong people got killed. Someone added 2+2, and suddenly it’s “Yes Congressman Issa, no Congressman Issa.”

Solyndra: Do liberals think their corruption is more excusable if it’s in the service of failure? That would help explain this high-speed train-wreck. You slam through a half billion dollars in loan guarantees to a solar panel-maker (who’s other main investor just happens to have been a big-time bundler for your election campaign).

Of course, said manufacturer needs those guarantees because the market isn’t willing to capitalize it without them. Why? Oh, its competitors in China are making the same product for pennies on the dollar, and it’s got warehouses full of unsold solar panels. Oh, and nobody else has been able to make the business work without government subsidy.

OK, liberals’ blind faith in government means they don’t get business, so maybe that’s understandable. But if you’re gonna do something shady with $550 million of taxpayer money, have the good sense not to publicize it ahead of time. But Solyndra was the poster child for Obama’s green jobs pipe dream. They had a ceremony. Joe Biden was there by satellite – presumably, Amtrac didn’t run there.

We’re left with the spectacle of Obama cronies taking the fifth while even the mainstream media are publishing embarrassing details about whistling showers and robotic spas, or something.

This is embarrassing. The French are having a hearty laugh at our incompetence in extra-governmental activities. Tin-pot dictators in Latin America are cringing. Superpower, indeed!

Like all liberals, Obama’s always on about investing in our “competitiveness.” Given the sad state of corruption in his government, he may want to remember that investment begins at home.

Here’s a dirty little (not-so-) secret: Liberal Democrats really aren’t very liberal, and they don’t much care for democracy. You want proof? I mean, beyond campus speech codes and “hate crime” laws and Thomas Friedman’s kinky fantasies about being disciplined by Chinese engineers?

Okay, how about: professional gas-bag Michael Moore has signed on to professional gas-bag Dylan Ratigan’s petition to get the professional gas out of politics. That is, the two well-paid leftists want a constitutional amendment banning “corporate money” from “our political system!”

That’s right. Michael Moore, who’s given the equivalent of the starting salary of one of his beloved UAW bowling buddies to Democrats, supports Ratigan’s effort to curtail political speech in the United States. “No person, corporation or business entity of any type,” reads their amendment, can give money “directly or indirectly” to any candidate or campaign for federal office. First Amendment Shmirst Amendment.

Ratigan, presumably, has seen up close the corrupting, nefarious impact of corporate largesse in the workings of government. Until recently, his checks were signed by GE CEO Jeff Immelt, who threw the full weight of his corporation into electing President Obama, and then reaping the benefits of flagrant crony capitalism.

I’m sure Ratigan’s outrage is further fueled by the Solyndra scandal, in which well-connected political fundraisers received sweetheart federal loan guarantees for a highly dubious business model that just happened to dovetail nicely with someone’s “green” ideology. And you can be sure he finds Silicon Valley’s embrace of liberal issues and politicians deeply troubling.

While we wait for Ratigan and Moore to denounce President Obama as a corporate stooge (or, in lingo I’m sure they’re nostalgic for, a “capitalist running dog”), let’s see who else isn’t really happy with this whole republican democracy thing.

Why there’s former Obama Budget Director Peter Orszag taking time out from raising his 17 families to moan in the New Republic that we need “less democracy” to control the gridlocked that has gripped Washington lo these many months. How about North Carolina Governor Bev Purdue suggesting, “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover.”

Yes, what politics needs is less accountability.

Look, anyone who’s observed American Lefties long enough knows that the only actual democracy they like involves getting homeless guys to vote in exchange for cigarettes. And who could blame them? They know better than the rest of us. So their natural inclination is to get our opinions out of their political system.

But this volley of complaints about our “small r” republican system is as sure a sign of lefty desperation as the sound of seeds and stems popping in their hash pipes. Obama has failed and failed big. He’s failed the country, yes, but that’s of little account. The problem is, he’s failed them. The union agenda is going nowhere. Green jobs are a grim joke. His environmentalist supporters can forget meaningful, economy-destroying action. The Earth would be better served if they pulled over their Priuses and flogged themselves in public for their crimes against Gaia (‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!)

No, the hot exhaust of failure is blowing up their white skirts of democracy and giving us a peek of their totalitarian iron underpants. It’s a desperate predicament, and an equally desperate metaphor.

Sept. 14, 2011

From: Dave Axelrod, Obama For America Chair

To: Obama For America Web Staff

RE: AttackWatch & next steps

Hey gang I really must congratulate you all on AttackWatch.com. I mean, wow! The Twitter buzz alone is overwhelming; literally thousands of tweets with the #AttackWatch hash tag. (Incidentally, we’ve got some experts in – Hollywood comedy writers – to look through and tell us what proportion, if any, of those tweets are sarcastic. Personally, I’m confident the vast majority aren’t.)

This is a bigger success even than the “Reality Check” website that let people tip off the government to healthcare reform sedition er, misinformation. Or http://www.fightthesmears.com/. BTW—the IRS guys are still talking about how many audits they got to do based on tips from that effort.

So since you guys are hitting home runs these days, I wanted to run a few ideas by you that I think might really build momentum going into next year. The bus tour really got things going, and I know you guys were very proud of the “black is the new black” color scheme you came up with. I think it really brought an upbeat, optimistic message to the folks in Arkansas, or Missouri, or wherever that was.

So tell me what you think of these ideas:

President Obama’s Little Red Book – I personally came up with this one. Think about it, all the president’s great sayings, maxims and quotes in a small, pocket-sized book. It would fit right in kids’ back packs or lunch boxes. We could talk to Arne Duncan about maybe getting some time carved out of the school day for reading and reflection on the Little Red Book.

President Obama’s Little Red iPod – I admit it, POTUS himself came up with this years ago, when he first gave one to Queen Elizabeth. (The old girl was knocked out, BTW, according to Rahm.) But you get all the president’s speeches, radio addresses and maybe him reading some of the more inspirational passages of “Dreams from my Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.” We could even tailor some to kids, with Sasha and Maliah reading about their mom’s new food guidelines, set it all to some JayZ beats and you’ve got a cultural phenomenon!

ObamaEyes – This one is imaginative. It plays off something that helps create that POTUS charisma – his intense and soulful eyes. We can do up posters of his face with holographic that follow you wherever go go. It’s like, “he’s always watching over you.” It could be reinforced with novelty glasses with his holographic eyes. Maybe we can make a deal with some of our Hollywood friends to have those be the 3-D glasses. How’s that for product placement?

Personal Visitations – if we could somehow make the logistics work, this is a proven winner. We’ve already seen what a hit POTUS’s backyard town halls are – how he connects with real people who actually have garden hoses and resin patio furniture. If we could figure out a way for him to appear in every backyard in America between now and Nov. 2012, we’re talking landslide lock. Hey, wait, I know! Garden Obamas! Yes, he can’t really be there, but what about The One in the form of outdoor garden statuary. Like gnomes, but much more magical. And it would be a Garden Obama with holographic eyes! Too exciting.

Let me know what you think of these ideas. Again, guys, congrats on AttackWatch! Unbelievable home run.

Best,

Dave A.

Sometime in the late afternoon of 9/11/01, my two-year-old son walked to the TV, pointed at yet another video clip of the falling towers and said, “No more.”

Of course, he was just sick of seeing it on TV instead of “SpongeBob.” He didn’t know why Mom and Dad were so upset or why all these bad pictures and sounds were coming off the TV.

But I’ve always kept that image, and whenever 9/11 comes up, it’s not very far away. Little blonde boy outlined against monstrous destruction. Life and death.

In that moment, I resolved that, whatever else my kids knew or didn’t know, they would understand who attacked their country and why. They’d understand why better men than their dad have to fight and kill and die in places they can’t pronounce.

Today on National Review, Michelle Malkin writes about the pitiful curricula many schools use to teach 9/11 in elementary school. It’s outrageous. But it’s not surprising.

We were told that 9/11 “changed everything.” If only. Sometime shortly after 9/11 someone, perhaps the NEA, came out with teacher guides for addressing the attacks with students. Except there weren’t attacks, they were “tragedies.” Teachers should let students know that crying was a natural and healthy response to thinking about 9/11. It was filled with the usual blather about misunderstanding and fear of “the other.”

It was the same mindset that that had pundits and academics wringing their hands about “why they hate us.” It produced the embarrassing travesty of the Flight 93 monument. It was the soft, feminized sensibility that found strange gratification in our being the victims. It’s the cultural rot that brings “grief counselors” parachuting into every unpleasant situation, that wilts before “hate speech” and demands to be shielded from the vicissitudes of competition and conflict. We’re the most comfortable and coddled society in history, and yet we don’t have the fundamental self-confidence not to doubt our virtues.

I’ve heard opponents of school choice advance the argument that a public education is sort of a cultural glue – if we all share the same experience of pledging allegiance to the flag everyday and all learn civics and history from the same textbooks we more easily cohere as a society. That may once have been true (although I never noticed the products of Catholic schools having any difficulty fitting in), but today it’s hard to examine that cultural glue and not conclude that it’s toxic.

There are no longer many heroes in the American story our kids get from school, except for the Martin Luther Kings and Frederick Douglasses – those stood up to America’s inequality and bigotry. There’s no longer any sense of America’s innate goodness, uniqueness, exceptionalism. Kids know less and less about history and government. The cultural glue is made up of historical ignorance and ambivalence toward our nation.

Conservatives long ago stopped trusting public schools to teach … well, much of anything. I can’t teach my kids math and science, so I defer to the school there. But I can teach them history and civics, right and wrong. My boys are 11 and 6, and they can tell you (to the degree their age allows them to really understand it) why we’ve been at war since the oldest was two. And they know who the good guys are.

While I would dearly love the school to teach them the truth about 9/11 in particular and American history in general, sadly, I don’t trust it to.

If tomorrow all the C4 were gone,
And the shampoo bomb that I made
And I had to rush the cockpit,
with just my trusty box-cutter blade.

I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be flyin’ outa here today.
‘Cause those latex gloves mean freedom,
so let them grope away.

And I’m proud to be a Somalian,
cause I know they won’t touch me.
Or the Saudi standing over there,
his eyes shifting nervously.

And I gladly stand here,
next to you and wait on line all day.
I don’t care if you miss your flight,
God bless the TSA.

From O’Hare in Chicago,
to ol’ Dulles IAD.
And the delayed planes of Logan,
To that dump in Miami.

From Detroit down to Houston,
and LaGuardia to L.A.
Well there’s pride in every Islamist heart,
and its time we stand and say.

That I’m proud to be a Somalian,
cause profiled I won’t be.
And I won’t forget the ACLU
That gave that right to me.

And I gladly laugh as you worry ‘bout missing
Your meeting in Eerie, PA.
And the man in blue snaps the glove on his hand,
God bless the TSA.

And I’m proud to be a Somalian,
a stone cold jihadi.
And I won’t forget that when I die,
72 virgins are waiting for me.

And I gladly pat you on your back,
and tell you it’ll be OK.
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt you’ll love his hand,
God bless the TSA.

Hey, excuse me, miss? Miss? Yeah, sorry. Look, are you going into this pharmacy? You are? Great, well, what are you picking up? I mean, what are you getting in there? No, don’t walk away! Please I just …

Uh, hello ma’am. Heading into the pharmacy? Are you planning on getting birth control? Please, wait! I just want to pay for it. No, I’m not a pervert. I just … the Secretary of Health and Human Services wants me to pay … Kathleen Sebelius? Ring a bell? …

Hi, I’m looking for women who are at this pharmacy to get contraceptives. See, I just want to pay for them … No. No, I’m not hoping to try them out with you. See, whether you knew it or not, your plunking down $10 every time you wanna make a little whoopie was a grave injustice. Now, thanks to ObamaCare, I’m supposed to pay for your contraceptives. Really. Except it’s through higher insurance premiums. See, Kathleen Sebelius, HHS Secretary, says it’s really important that women get contraceptives under their insurance plans with no co-pay.

But I thought I’d just cut out the middle man, so to speak. Simply paying more to a faceless company is so … impersonal. I like to see and talk to the women I’m helping and, you know, make sure they’re getting the contraceptive solution that’s right for them.

So what’ll it be today? The Pill? Diaphragm with spermicidal gel? The old reliable condom (ribbed, for her enjoyment!)? Maybe a nice photo of Helen Thomas?  Ow! No … you don’t need a cop! Ow. That hurt! Please, it’s ObamaCare! It’s gotta be … Ow! …

Let’s all just stop, just briefly, to appreciate this moment. Look around. Drink it in. Deep breath. Smell that? [sigh] That, my friend, is the scent of home-cooked cynicism.

Don’t think I’m counting my chickens before they come home to roost, and yes, the nation is still severely wee-wee’d up. Obama may well be re-elected.

But it’s recognizably America again, and nothing proves it as eloquently as the spectacle last night of Obama commandeering TV time for a desperate, openly political speech. “I’m relevant! Call you congressmen and make sure they know it,” he more or less begged. Congress had left him behind, still babbling about “increased revenues” like Milton fretting over his red Swingline in “Office Space.”

Everything he’s touched has turned to horse patties, and this morning comes news that even his base can smell the … failure. Blacks, liberals, young people – they’re all joining the independents that wised up months ago. When you haven’t worked in years and even Tabasco can’t make the steady diet of platitudes, promises and outright falsehoods more palatable, it might be time to take a look at Dear Leader.

Skeptical, surly, suspicious and a few other appropriate alliterations, Americans mostly don’t buy into utopian visions. And if you could convince them of its existence, good luck telling them that utopia is administered by the people that brought you the Department of Energy.

We’ve come a long way, baby. In 2008, half the nation thought “Hope & Change” was an acceptable substitute for a political program. Women fainted when “The One” (he was the “The One” – Oprah told them so) strode on stage to be framed gloriously by Styrofoam Greek columns.

In such a grand setting, a man without a single verifiable accomplishment (except managing to write two autobiographies about his lack of same) told America that his nomination was the moment the oceans would cease to rise and the planet would start to heal. The polar bears would fist-bump, children would take up sensible diet and exercise and mountain lions would go vegan.

Finally, glamour and style had returned to the White House. His abs! Her arms! Those dresses! That hypo-alergenic dog! For the first time in your life, it was possible to be proud of your county.

Only conservative troglodytes were so uncouth as to point out the presumptuousness of a Chicago community organizer giving a campaign speech in … Berlin, or of creating a seal for President-Elect of the United States. Only the most embittered partisans would find teaching kindergarteners chants to Obama, and his desire to bypass you and speak directly to your kids in their classroom to be disturbingly totalitarian.

Reality bites, and bites hard. When your single accomplishment as president (killing bin Laden) is something Senator Obama would have found distasteful under the last administration, you can’t keep that cult of personality going.

And anyway, cults of personality are fundamentally un-American. Schadenfreude, on the other hand, is red white n’ blue.

President Obama: Amigos! You think I do not feel your pain? Do I not know how the hated gringos first stole Texas from you, and then made the scene of your greatest military achievement, The Alamo, into a memorial to the land-grabbing dogs Santa Anna killed there?

Then do I not know how they invaded Mexico herself? Came with their death-dealing cannon and flashing  bayonets to take the tortillas from the mouths of the niños? To bring their filthy death to Chapultapec and even to Mexico City?

No, companeros! I have heard these tales from the village elders in Chicago, and from tomato pickers in California, and from the old men in the cantinas. And I say to you today, for too long have they robbed you of what is yours. Gotten rich off your culture, with their Taco Bells and cerveza with lime in it! They have taken your women — Eva Longoria, need I say more? They look down on you soap operas on Telemundo, while they drink you tequila in Cancun!

Amigos, we will ride against them, eh? We will shoot them down like pigs. We will make them know what it is to crawl like dogs, to beg for water in the desert and be given only dust. Those that live, we will make our burros.

We will come like a storm across the mesa, like the toros free from the pen. We will sweep them before us, and reclaim for you the lands that are yours: California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Yes, Amigos, we will ride!

Ok I’ll be happy to, um, take some questions.

 Unidentified man: Senor Obama, when? When do we ride? The horses grow restless and the dogs that follow us clamor for gringo meat!

 President Obama: Well, as I’ve said in the past, I think as soon as I …

 Second Man: Will there be gold for us senor?

 Third Man: And women? Will we get their women?

President Obama: Gold. Well, uh, yes. But as I’ve said, you need to invest in uh, the uh, infrastructure of this kind of ummmm, revolution of well, ummmm, reconquest. And, so, if you could all make your checks out to “Obama 2012.”

Unidentified woman: Senor, why do you pronounce it “Me – he – ko?” Do you think we are as stupid as the Pah – Kee – Stahn – ees?

President Obama: Well, I, um, let me be clear: I have the utmost respect for your uh, unique, um, culture and, I ah, want to make sure you uh, know that, unlike other administrations, mine is, uh … sensitive to your uh, unique … culture.

Woman: But it sounds stupid

Unidentified man: When Senor? When will my knife slake it’s thirst for gringo blood? I have my eye on a Starbucks franchise in Modesto. When, senior?!

President Obama: As soon as our preparations are complete. Probably, December, 2012 …