Old Stone Face

Egypt is in flames. Rioters fill the streets, tanks are rolling, and revolution (if not outright anarchy) is in the air.

One of our nation's largest and most important allies in the Mideast may soon fall under the control of the anti-American Muslim Brotherhood, and president Barack Hussein Obama has said...well... absolutely nothing.

Oh, Robert Gibbs has made it clear that the president is tirelessly "monitoring" the situation, presumably by having aides shout updates to him from the sidelines of the Whitehouse basketball court.

Of course, this is the same president who reacted to the peoples' uprising in Iran by watching the bloodshed in the streets, then suggesting that he'd like to "see how things play out" before commenting.

But unlike the president and the Sphinx, Hope n' Change actually has an opinion and is willing to voice it. What we're seeing in the world today (and not just Egypt), is the violence and chaos that one would expect if the world's stabilizing superpower suddenly ceased to be of any meaning or consequence.

Because under Barack Hussein Obama, that's exactly what has happened.

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UPDATE: Since we wrote the commentary above, Barack Hussein Obama has actually read a teleprompter statement about Egypt which someone wrote for him. As nearly as we can tell, he very strongly supports both sides, thinks that Facebook service should be restored so he and Hosni Mobarak can "poke" each other again, and he believes that Egypt should pursue a future which is more hopeful and more changeful.

In other words, he still hasn't said squat.
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Color Blind

Proving that America's War on Terror never sleeps (or that it wouldn't if we could still call it the "War on Terror" rather than the "Counter-Strategic Offsets to Man-Caused Secular Disasters"), Janet Napolitano has announced the end of the color-coded terror warning system which was put in place after the horrific attacks of 9/11.

According to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, "When it takes an entire box of Crayolas to represent threat levels, then the terrorists have won." Moreover, since the Department of Homeland Security pays approximately $1.3 million dollars per box of Crayolas, the new system stands to save a lot of taxpayer money.

Napolitano's new system will concentrate on only two threat levels: "elevated threat" and "imminent threat."

"Elevated threat" is the baseline, and it means that the world is a terrible and dangerous place and that we should all feel sick to our stomachs with fear at all times, because it will never ever be safe again.

"Imminent threat" means that you're standing next to a woman in a burka, and she's ticking.

Frankly, we think the system could easily be refined even further by boiling down the two threat levels to "looks okay to me" and "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" And we plan to suggest this to the Department of Homeland Security as soon as we can figure out how to pad it into a 2000 page report and bill them a couple of million dollars for the advice.

But in all seriousness, Hope n' Change thinks the new system is probably a good idea. After all, agents of Homeland Security seemingly can't spot the difference between likely terror suspects, and Amish barrelmakers, grandmothers in wheelchairs, or small children.

So the odds are pretty good that they were color blind, too.

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Also useful for connecting the dots.
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Barack to the Future

At a time of crisis and pessimism, America has finally heard her great rallying cry. And according to Barack Obama, it's "Quick, Marty! Into the time machine!"

In his State of the Union speech, the president declared that Americans need to aspire to a "Sputnik moment," sending millions of baffled citizens to the Internet to discover that the launch of Sputnik was the greatest and only recorded success of communism. Oh.

The president continued his time traveling theme by saying that America used to be the home of innovation and invention, the home of Edison (who invented the lightbulbs Democrats are outlawing) and the Wright Brothers (who created jobs for TSA crotch-watchers).

But somehow, Americans have lost their innovative "can do" spirit since the good ol' Sputnik days of 1957, which is pretty hard to explain.

After all, that's about the same time that the Democrats' "Great Society" spending programs began, to guarantee better educations, racial harmony, and financial stability and security for the rest of our lives. It's about the time that a nascent electronic news media first realized it had the power to elect Presidents based on looks, or could affect the outcome of a war through selective reporting. It was a time when women were encouraged (mostly by men) to burn their bras, do drugs, have casual sex, and get abortions on demand to express their freedom.

So why in the world would Barack Obama want to give up all of that, just to return to a primitive era of opportunity, initiative, hard work, effective education, personal responsibility, and family values?

And the answer, of course, is that he doesn't.

America's problem isn't that her citizens need a Sputnik. It's that her politicians need a Buttkik.
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One Spending Freeze On The Rocks

After going on the biggest "debt binge" in human history, Barack Obama promised in his State of the Union message that he was going to cut way way way way way way WAY back on the deficit by continuing to spend exactly the same unsustainable amounts of money for the next five years.

Say what...?

Using this same logic, an overweight person who eats a dozen doughnuts for breakfast can actually lose vast amounts of weight by not adding a 13th doughnut in the future. Or double their weight loss by not eating a 14th doughnut!

Alcoholics can go on the wagon without giving up actual drinks, drug addicts can go "clean" while continuing to shoot up, and rapists can stop being treated as criminals as long as they only bag their usual quota of victims and don't add any extras.

In other words, the president who ran on "Hope and Change" is now suggesting that no change is the best change.

Or at least, it's the best that we can get from people like Mr. Obama who have no intention of cutting back on their vices.

And that, sadly, is the state of our union.
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State of the Obvious

Tonight, Barack Obama's teleprompter will expound on the "State of the Union," which Democrats will react to with the same screaming, yelling, applauding enthusiasm usually reserved for World Wrestling Federation events (which are equally scripted, but far more believable).

Early reports say that the alleged president's speech will focus primarily on three topics: unity between the parties, a big pro-business pro-competition agenda, and "good Obama's" successful defeat of his evil twin "bad Obama" who fought tooth and nail against unity and business for two years. In fact, the previous guy even had "Bad Obama" legally listed as the name on his birth certificate, which is why he wouldn't let anyone see it. It's already been confirmed on Snopes.com.

Anyway, looking at the text for last year's State of the Union, we're impressed by how much of it can be warmed up and served again this year. In fact, even without being warmed, much of it is steaming.

For instance, in that speech Obama created his Deficit Reduction Commission which would give specific instructions by a specific date. Not only did this not happen, but the Democrats used the existence of the Commission as their excuse to not limit their spending in any way, nor create an actual budget for the year.

Mr. Obama also promised to make jobs his "number one priority in 2010," although he apparently meant that it would be "number one after I've jammed through takeover of healthcare, done more to make the military gay-friendly, and taken 17 more vacations."

Mr. Obama swore to the American people that his healthcare plan would let them keep their insurance policies and their doctors, while reducing costs for millions of families and businesses. None of whom have yet been located.

Mr. Obama then promised that he would "go through the budget, line by line, page by page, to eliminate programs that we can't afford and don't work." Which, in fairness, he might have done if the Democrats didn't skip creating a budget for him to look at line by line and page by page.

Also in the speech was Mr. Obama's concession that "Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, no matter how malicious, is just part of the game," and renewed his promise to "change the tone" of the rhetoric in Washington. After which the Democrats spent the rest of the year accusing Republicans of being Nazis, and accusing Sarah Palin of mass murder.

Still, we don't want to be too skeptical about the upcoming speech. After all, from time to time, words of great truth and importance are spoken before a joint session of congress. Words that not only perfectly sum up a time and place, but illuminate and inspire with their crystalline accuracy and rhetorical power. Words that will ring through the corridors of history.

Most recently those words were, "You lie!"
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An ill windy

The Windy City is about to become the Hot Air capital of the world, thanks to Barack Obama's announcement that he is moving his reelection headquarters to Chicago, which represents "real" America better than Washington DC does.

Presumably this is true because Chicago, and the rest of Illinois, has gone into the economic dumper with unfunded government promises which can't be honored.

And Chicago has other "real American" features such as last year's murder rate of 448 people. That means that in an average week in Chicago, more people are murdered than were killed in Jared Loughner's shooting rampage in Tucson. Perhaps the president should remind Chicagoans about "civil discourse."

But Chicago does have good qualities which make it an attractive place for Mr. Obama to launch his next presidential bid. It's the sort of friendly place where a land developer like Tony Rezko might pay for half your estate just on a whim. A place where Mr. Obama can walk just a few steps to reminisce with his old bomb-making, flag-stomping terrorist pal Bill Ayers...or swap fashion tips with dapper Nation of Islam-founder Louis Farrakhan - both of whom live in Mr. Obama's expensive neighborhood, albeit without known financial support from Tony Rezko.

And what could possibly be more "real" than the spiritual uplift Mr. Obama will feel when returning to his Chicago church, and a good old-fashioned "God DAMN America!" sermon from his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright? Reverend, your chicken is coming home to roost.

Yes, Chicago is where the Obama magic began. The magic which all of America is now experiencing!

Which is why we say, in a way that we sincerely hope will heal and not wound, "Windy City? Blow me!"
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Pupu Patter

To put an end to all of this "birther" nonsense once and for all, Democratic Governor of Hawaii Neil Abercrombie made news when he announced that he was going to find and show Barack Hussein Obama's longform birth certificate.

The Governor, who was an alleged friend of the alleged president's alleged parents back in their carefree days of bigamy and teen pregnancy, has subsequently been digging for the least-seen artifact since the Ark of the Covenant and now, only a few short months later, he can state with irrefutable certainty that "a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist."

Oddly, the previous Governor of Hawaii claimed that a person under her authority had seen and verified the document, and that she then had it "sealed away" to avoid prying eyes.

Meanwhile, the state's Attorney General says that Hawaii's privacy laws prevent the Governor or anyone else from seeing the birth certificate, assuming one exists, without the president's consent.

All of which means the governmental officials in Hawaii either can't get their stories straight, or they've been having waaaaaaaay too many Mai-Tai's at lunch.

Despite Governor Abercrombie's failure to find Obama's birth certificate, he has said that he's pretty sure that Obama's birth was recorded informally in a ledger somewhere or other (or maybe on a Post-it note) and he'll definitely find it one of these days when he has more time. Currently, his top priority is dealing with Hawaii's emergency response to this harsh winter, and Mr. Abercrombie only has time for shoveling snow.

Or was it sand?

We can't remember...but we're pretty sure he's shoveling something.
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