I hope everyone had a good Christmas despite the much-hyped catastrophe we’re still calling an economy. I came out pretty well, as cold-hearted conservatives often do, managing to steal some rather succulent candy from a baby as well as cashing in on my illicit oil contracts well before the bottom fell out of the market. Speaking of which, when can we expect our personal bailout checks to arrive– is it January 20th or do we have to wait till the 21st? I don’t want to cramp our Messiah’s style when he gets into office, but I’d like my share of “hope” before too long. I’d hate to get behind on the mortgages of my seven homes.

Actually, it might be a good thing. Then he can just pick up the tab on those as well. If we’re no longer kicking people out during the holiday season, who’s to say that it’s any less cruel to kick me to to the curb with St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner?

Here’s hoping your resolution isn’t to stop drinking.

I’m sure that by now you’ve heard the story of those Chicago workers who got laid off without notice, whether you wanted to hear about it or not. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but sympathy for people who get stung in this economic downturn but how the blame has been placed in this case is astonishingly pathetic and indicative of how we’ve got into this financial mess in the first place.

The majority of the blame has been leveled at Bank of America for refusing to continue providing a line of credit to a failed company. BoA stated that it had been working with the company for months, attempting to address the concerns that were going to cause the business to lose its credit to no avail. A few decades ago we never would have even considered deriding a bank for the financial failings of a company. These days? Scapegoat should’ve been chosen as the word of the year.

It wasn’t the bank that was unable to compete or remain successful in the marketplace. It wasn’t up to the bank to enforce or create labor agreements with workers. Yet somehow Bank of America becomes the villain. “Workers win” the AP trumpets. The workers haven’t won. All they’ve managed to do is squeeze the last bit of blood from a financial turnip, using populism in order to force the bank to extend “loans” that will never be repayed. It isn’t the bank’s job to pay your workers! That this even needs to be reinforced explains so much about this past election cycle and our country’s condition as a whole.

Why, it’s almost as if we believed it was every larger entity’s responsibility to save companies that have proven to be utter failures. Can you imagine something more ass backwards and silly? Oh wait.

On a Sunday morning not unlike this one 67 years ago today, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor and launched America’s unwanted involvement in World War II. With as much as we all seem to have going on these days, please take a few moments today to reflect on the sacrifices that have been made to protect this country and all of us. From the very first rebels of the colonies to the men and women still serving around the globe today, we’ve shed much precious blood in the name of freedom and American life so that many of us can sit comfortably behind our keyboards, desks, televisions, steroes, etc day in and day out. Be thankful for it.

Since the major news networks aren’t particularly interested in the Pearl Harbor attacks anymore, here are a few links to jumpstart your historical memory. As usual, the History channel seems to be a better way to spend the afternoon than anything else on television.

“A Date Which Will Live in Infamy”: FDR Asks for a Declaration of War

FOXNews.com - Pearl Harbor Survivor Recalls Horrific Attack 67 Years Later

Hot Air doesn’t disappoint either.

Barack Obama started his final jog up the White House steps by opening his own quasi-official government website. Calling itself ‘the office of the president-elect’, it purports to present the agenda of the newcomer. In actuality, it is a rehash of the Obama for president campaign website, registered by the same individuals and sloppily copied at that. Indeed, some comparisons to the McCain campaign’s positions still existed earlier today. I make that distinction because the site is constantly in flux, which wouldn’t be unusual in itself, but given that its showcasing a faux-government entity, that’s a bit disconcerting.

There are a lot more troubling aspects to this site than just lazy editing. The new president seems to want people’s names and addresses for an unlisted reason, most likely in order to net more names for campaign fundraising in the future– remember that the Obama campaign seems to have purposefully disabled all credit card safety checks that are routinely in place for online merchants, including address verification, in order to allow people to funnel money in as quickly and as illicitly as possible. To put it in terms more familiar for our lefty friends, wouldn’t you have raised an eyebrow if George Bush opened a site asking you to leave a little story and all your personal details/contact information? Especially in the age of telecom wiretaps and supposed government abuses?

The absolute worst part of the site, which has since been scrubbed clean, was a section stating that Obama wanted to make it mandatory for middle school, high school, and college students to complete lengthy commitments to community service. Now we’re treated to a more vague extolation of the virtues of public service and promise of free candy (and college) for those willing to sign up. It’s quite a bit less threatening, but a testament to who Barack Obama has shown himself to be: namely someone willing to say absolutely whatever he needs to in order to garnish popular support, even if it directly contradicts what he’s said mere moments before. You can see the original and edited versions here, it’s pretty sick stuff.

Why is it wrong to ask for compulsory service in this country you might ask? Well, beyond the hysteria on the left in the 2004 campaign about the prospect of Bush secretly reinstating the draft, it goes against the foundation of individual freedom in this country to force servitude. It is your American right to either give the country your all or to give it nothing. That’s the basis of the free market, of our individual liberty, and the often-quoted-but-never-located separation of church and state. As part of this now edited effort, Obama also promises to create ‘Classroom Corps’ to help plan lessons and educate the underprivileged. I’m just wondering if these government-sponsored administrative branch observers will be unbiased additions to the classroom or something more intrusive. Two guesses, if you need ‘em.

So here’s some small crumbs of confirmation before the main course arrives at Che Obama: he’ll toss anything against the wall to see if it sticks. I feel better already.

Update: Allah at Hot Air picks it up.

If one day of carping in the blogosphere is enough to get The One to reverse himself, maybe we can work with this guy after all.

Work with him? Why not? It’s easy to compromise when you have no intention of sticking to your position. It just makes finding out if you’ve actually had the last word on an issue a touch more difficult to discern. Who knows what pandering promises the next day holds?

When I originally made this post, I couldn’t have dreamed how right I was.

In a bid to end speculation that Kim Jong Il had suffered a stroke, North Korean officials released a new picture of the “Dear Leader” in apparently good health. But is the image genuine?

A Times Online reader with an eye for detail has pointed out that there is something shady about the shadows in the picture.

A close inspection of the photograph published yesterday by the Korean Central News Agency suggests that the shadow cast by Mr Kim is very different to those cast by the soldiers standing alongside him.

I’d still really like to know who is running that country right now, and how they’re going to test Barack Obama once he gets into office. That isn’t a criticism of the Messiah, I’m willing to give him a chance on it, but I hope to hell that his team is paying attention.

It’s always been a mistake to trust and/or attempt to verify with the North Koreans. John Bolton, whose wisdom knows not the bounds of mere mortal facial hair, wrote an open letter to Barry earlier this week that is worth a read. Plus any excuse to repost my old parodies is always going to be taken.

Personally, I was more impressed with Fox News’ magic draw-as-you-go big board that they played around with all night, but CNN drew a lot of media attention for their debut of the field reporter ‘hologram’. The only problem was that it wasn’t a hologram at all, which was painfully obvious from the video, merely instead more green screen work like we already see from cable news every day. Instead of just projecting a fake background or a new HEY LOOK HERE graphic in the bottom corner, CNN decided to bring the whole reporter home.

I don’t understand why they wasted all that special effect technology to bring her back to the studio. If it were me, I would’ve had my reporters reporting LIVE VIA ‘HOLOGRAM’ from THE MOON, DINOSAUR ISLAND or THE INSIDE OF A COLON. I think that really would have improved their ratings. Instead we just had a few short segments of Wolf Blitzer staring slightly off into space– which isn’t really that different than normal now that I think about it.

In an article reviewing the lackluster CNN ploy Don Reisinger inadvertently catches the truth of what has actually happened this election cycle.

I applaud CNN for at least trying something new. But if show producers are smart, they’ll shelve their "hologram" idea, and move on to something bigger and better, like transporting Ms. Yellin back and forth between Chicago and New York next time. I think that’ll keep them busy for a while, and help us enjoy some quality programming, while they’re trying to figure out how to reconstruct atoms.

I know the idea of a "hologram" is alluring to some. But let’s not allow our hopes for the future cloud our judgment.

CNN’s "hologram" was dumb.

It’s a little late to issue warnings about not letting ‘hope’ cloud our judgment.

Anyone who spent half an hour watching the returns last night after 7PM ET could have told you how the election was going to end up. I didn’t watch it with the fervor that I watched the 2000 or 2004 elections because quite frankly I didn’t have that much of a dog in this fight. Yes, I was hoping that the Messiah wouldn’t be anointed by the masses, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled over the prospect of a McCain victory. John McCain was never the choice of a conservative, nor did any other evil neoconservatives that I know feel their heart flutter in a Maverick love affair.

As the networks showed just how hesitant they were to call some of what we thought were to be reliable red states, I tuned out. I think that it is fair to measure disappointment by the amount of alcohol that one consumes in response to election results. I ended up drinking a measly beer and a half last night. I’m sure that the straight talk express was past the legal limit, but I can’t imagine that many ‘true’ conservatives actually felt that upset that we didn’t win. There is an important distinction to be made between disappointment that our side didn’t win and the disappointment that our rivals prevailed.

The latter is much more palpable, representing the bulk of Republican/Conservative/Bitter Typical White Person disappointment. As we rightly warned the Democrats in 2004, it is exponentially more difficult to win an election by voting against someone than it is to win an election by having genuine enthusiasm for a candidate of your own. (More on that later)

Barack Obama was able to create a sense of excitement among voters that we haven’t seen in a very long time. It doesn’t appear that Obama managed to truly redraw the map or create a flood of new voters as had been foreseen in many liberal crystal balls, but he energized his base and they did indeed turn out in force. The McCain plan to ‘appeal to the masses’ at the expense of the conservative core was a failure like we all anticipated it to be. Given who John McCain has been, and I have no qualms with his independent nature, it was the campaign he had to run. That doesn’t mean it the right opposition to a charismatic young star like Obama– it was the candidate we were dealt by a weak field and a poorly timed primary process.

As we saw the campaign develop it became clear to me that McCain wasn’t interested in playing hardball. Despite what the mainstream media reported, the McCain attack ads were late in the game, incoherent, and ignored the most potent (and legitimate) arguments against Barack Obama. Perhaps it was lingering scorn at how he was sunk by the Bush campaign in 2000 or just the strange sense of honor that McCain has followed his entire career (I choose to attribute the atrocious McCain-Feingold to this instead of deliberate curtailing of rights or naiveté) that kept him from hitting the Messiah hard, but whatever the reason– the attacks never stuck. McCain couldn’t even bring himself to the level of his own ads at the debates despite being given every opportunity to follow up on the love taps he’d been dishing out.

Blame is being placed at every foot to the ideological right of Larry Craig’s tapping loafers for the failure this time around. Palin is being torpedoed by staffers and George Bush is being blamed as per law. (I’m sure it was something passed around 2004 that requires George Bush to be complicit in any evil and/or unfortunate deed or event that takes place.) Since it appears from the numbers game that it was a lack of base turnout that contributed greatly to our loss, I think that pummeling Palin is out. If anything she shored up support by the conservative base, becoming the spoonful of sugar that helped most of us take our McMedicine. I find it hard to believe that George Bush is ultimately to blame for the election results either, as George Bush actually won reelection as George Bush in 2004. The fact alone that he was able to be reelected, with a much wider margin of victory, negates full blame for me. If voters considered McCain to be George Bush, George Bush himself shouldn’t have even come close to beating Kerry given that the assaults on his character and conduct haven’t really gained any new material since the 2004 campaign.

We can blame the economy and Bush’s support of the bailout, but McCain ended up supporting it as well. If the financial crisis were truly to be behind the loss this year, the margins should have been wider. We should have seen quite a bit more eroded support than we did. It was the number one issue to be sure, but it was the fault of the liberal members of Congress who forced the financial institutions to lend money to people who couldn’t repay it. George Bush fought against the rampant credit run-up, as did the Republicans, and it was so obvious that even Saturday Night Live acknowledged it! That McCain couldn’t make this fact stick, or even be bothered to espouse it to the public at every (or any) opportunity was a massive failure on the part of the campaign.

It was McCain’s campaign that controlled access to Sarah Palin. If she were truly the incompetent that she has been portrayed to be then it was up to the campaign to ready her for those “tough” questions and find her the proper venues to play to her strengths. They did neither, just as they didn’t go with the strongest attacks against Obama. We begged McCain to take the gloves off, people literally begged at the rallies, and the best we ever got was the last three minutes of his acceptance speech. That passion and power never showed itself again and it was that more than Palin or Dubya that drowned us.

The choice between McCain and Obama for independents never rested on the facts. McCain’s liberal tendencies didn’t stand a chance. The vast majority of casual Obama voters don’t really care about his positions, evidenced by their blind acceptance of his innumerable 180 degree turns on the issues. Instead they were truly inspired by hope and change. They pulled the lever literally hoping that things would get better. The nuts and bolts of how that might happen didn’t matter as much as the smile and smooth baritone of a good politicker. This fact doesn’t even bother them. This might change depending on the competence exhibited by Barry’s administration over the next four years, but don’t expect the mainstream media to be any more critical than they were during this campaign.

The best thing we have going for us is the apathy of the hanger-on. Those who thought Obama is the man with all the answers will find out that without constant rallies and get out the vote meetings that politics is truly boring and that one man doesn’t have all the answers. Hopefully by 2012 we will have a more charismatic and base-driven set of ideological leaders prying for the primaries.

All this aside, I don’t want it to appear that I’m bitter about Obama’s win. One thing that I think will be ignored by the left is the level of non-insanity that we exhibit at this loss. You don’t see the echo chamber filling with expletives and allegations of election stealing. You won’t. We respect the process and the office of the presidency. Obama won it, he’ll get his shot. Even though I disagree with him, I wish him well. I want our country to succeed, whoever is at the helm.

We’ll just have to see what happens and how quickly Biden’s prediction of testing will come to pass.

Keep the faith, my friends.*

More at: Right Wing Nut House | Michelle Malkin | Hot Air |

*At least we don’t have to hear that tired phrase anymore.