All the links that are fit to print

Aside from the wonderful comments you all left during my week on the ski slopes, I got dozens of fascinating emails with links I wanted to pass on to you, but couldn’t because of the limitations inherent in blogging on the iPhone.  First, though, I have to share with you something incredibly funny I saw when I made my Costco run on the way home from the airport today.  The picture below is sort of bad, because I was trying to take it unobtrusively, but I think you can see that someone with either a very good sense of humor, or no sense of humor at all, arranged side by side Bernard Goldberg’s A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media, and the New York Times’ Obama: The Historic Journey, which is the ultimate slobbering book:

And now back to the link fest:

The Anchoress has a twofer post that discusses both the way in which, in true 1984 fashion, the major media outlets are scrubbing the news to delete any criticisms about Obama and the fact that Obama is threatening America’s mayors.  Obama seems a little bit unclear on the Constitutiona limitations placed on his office.  Let’s hope that even the Democratic mayors are sufficiently protective of their powers that they too contemplate a little uprising.

And speaking of little uprisings, I know I’m late to the party, but I wanted to make sure all of you saw the video coming from the Chicago Trading Floor.  Obama did, and he threw his toothless and drooling attack dog, Pres. Secy Robert Gibbs, into the fray. American Thinker explains why Gibbs is out of his league when he says that Santelli doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Watching Gibbs launch his ill-informed, juvenile fizzy little missiles against Rick Santelli would be amusing if it weren’t yet another reminder of the striking ineptitudes that characterize the vast majority of Obama’s appointments.  I mentioned earlier today that his guys and gals have mastered antisemitism (at least some have), but I left out that their other area of mastery is, of course, tax evasion (with Rahm Emanuel’s sins, known for months, finally hitting the public eye).

Once again doing the work the MSM refuses to do, Dr. Rusty Shackleford noticed that the feds caught a California resident with very close ties to Al Qaeda.  Hellllooo, MSM!!!  There’s a story out here.

Steve Schippert is also keeping an eye on things and reminds us that our Southern Border is a very, very dangerous place.  It looks as if Obama, who has never held a meaningful job in his life, is going to have to master very quickly the art of focusing on more than one highly charged issue at a time.

Watching the Obama/Congressional team at work, I feel it’s imperative that we keep reminding American people that Governments don’t make wealth.  They only print money, which is mere paper.  People make wealth.  The more money the government team takes away from the American people, the less wealth they can create.  You and I understand that this is the Obama team’s goal, because it doesn’t want to enrich America, it wants to enslave America to socialist economic principles (and I recognize that it’s an oxymoron to use the words socialist and economic in the same sentence).  However, he’s flim-flammed at least some Americans into thinking government creates and we must just repeat over and over and over that this simply isn’t true.

We all feared it would happen, and so it has come to pass, but trust Charles Krauthammer to spell out in excruciating detail the large “kick me” sign Obama has affixed to America’s backside.  (Incidentally, the WaPo article was apparently originally titled “Obama’s ‘Kick-Me’ Diplomacy,” which still appears on the web page tab banner, only to have been changed in the print version to the more genteel “Obama’s Supine Diplomacy.”)  Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, with less verve but with equally compelling facts, also report on Obama’s determined efforts to paint a yellow stripe down America’s back.

Fred Barnes has some interesting thoughts about Obama’s first month (has it only been a month?) in office.  Although it’s early days yet, there are definite patterns emerging.

We’ve been hearing lots and lots about the resurgence of patriotism now that Obama is president.  (Sally Zelikovsky wrote a great article on the subject and, having seen her neighbor’s house, I can tell why she was inspired to do so.)  I also like James Taranto’s pithy distinction between patriotism and partisanship, something that seems to elude the new flag-wavers.  His starting point is an article in a Brown University magazine crowing and glowing about the way in which students now feel free to show their love for America:

Yes, Barack Obama’s election prompted an outpouring of latent or brand new patriotic sentiments. “It was the first time in our lives we felt proud to be American,” says Sarah Schoenbrun, class of ’09. Elliott Gorn, a professor, says his students “seem less negative about America” than they had before. Kaitlyn Scott ’10 says of her American flag T-shirt: “I haven’t taken this out of the drawer in years, and finally I feel like I can wear it again.”

And on and on. “Some students also believe that Obama has reclaimed a broader definition of patriotism,” Goodman writes. It never seems to occur to him that what he is describing is exactly the opposite of this. The sentiment he chronicles, if it can be called patriotism at all, is as cramped a definition of patriotism as one can imagine: Now that my party is in power, I love America.

There is no contradiction between patriotism and partisanship: One can love one’s country while disapproving of its current government. That, however, is decidedly not the sentiment Goodman found at Brown.

If you haven’t already read it, you’ll find some hope in Michelle Malkin’s column about Americans voicing their dismay with the pork package.  As I noted earlier this week, the people I’ve spoken to on ski slopes and airplanes are completely dismayed with the spendulus bill but, like the good sheep they are, they’re going along with it because they feel they have no options.  Malkin points out that politely taking to the street (not in a replay of the anarchistic violence of 1968, but simply as a visible symbol of protest) may be a good thing.  I mean, you know citizens are figuring things out when even San Franciscans have let it be known that they want to pay fewer City taxes, and will cut City services if that’s what it takes.

Here’s a novel idea:  how about if our legislators read the bills before they vote? Nah.  You’re right.  Too radical.  Assumes literacy and intelligence on their parts.

One of the virtues of being in the opposition is that people can coalesce around a single big idea — we’re opposed to the spendulus bill — and gloss over the myriad differences that have previously weekend them.  However, once spendulus is grinding through the government mills, conservatives are once again going to have to tackle their divisions so that they can create a coherent political machine that will offset the Progressives’ rape and pillage of the taxpayers.  Over at Bent Notes, you can see a good start at defining what unites conservatives.