Open thread *UPDATED*

Full plate of work that will keep me busy through 3:00 (my time).  This is therefore an open thread — which I consider a brilliant idea, since I’m bereft of ideas and I bet you’re not.

UPDATE:  Just had to comment on the fact that our speaker is an incredible idiot.  If it was a conservative, given her age, they’d be making nasty cracks about Alzheimers.  I say skip the disease and just go for stupid.

UPDATE II:  All of us predicted it.  We all said that electing a leftist neophyte with delusions of grandeur wasn’t just stupid, it was dangerous.  Victor Davis Hanson spells out just how dangerous it’s proving itself to be — and that after only two weeks of a new administration.  Pride goeth before a fall.  Bite off more than you can chew and you will choke.  Hubris.  It was all written there in advance in myth and popular saying.  Obama deserves a great deal of the blame, of course, but so do 54% of the American people and 90% of the American press corp.

UPDATE III:  Jonah Goldberg exposes the hypocrisy behind the liberals breaching the religion of tax to the poor slobs who work hard (when they’re not clinging to guns and God), while freely excluding themselves from the same obligations.

UPDATE IV:  Thomas Sowell is optimistic about Michael Steele’s ability to communicate clearly, frequently and without apology core conservative principles.  I am too.  I try not to make the too common mistake (as we’ve seen in this past election) of confusing quality of words with quality of ideas.  Nevertheless, if you do indeed have quality ideas, you better have a medium by which to communicate them.

UPDATE V:  We’ve wondered at this blog whether liberal columnists will be able to attack Obama, or if they’ll continue to cringe worshipfully at their feet.  Charles Martel floated the concept, with which I agreed, that a least some of the media is like the scorpion, whose nature is to sting no matter what.  Maureen Dowd is demonstrating that fact.  She’s written an amusing, critical and right-on-the-money column about the myriad failures of the newbie Obama administration.  True to the confluence of her scorpion nature and BDS, Dowd couldn’t resist a residual attack on the old administration, but it’s clear that she’s got her stinger aimed at a new target.  Remember too, that to the extent Obama wooed the media, there is no hate stronger than that of a lover scorned or disappointed.  In other words, if the media turns on him, it will be ugly.