It’s the new math: “New Home Sales 2011: Worst Year on Record” + “Annual GDP grew just 1.7 percent, debt nearly larger than economy” = Gee, that Obama sure is doing some damage to this country, isn’t he?

There. Because I’m a giver, that’s why.

Jonah Goldberg

[Obama] said of the military: “At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach.”

That is disgusting.

What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn’t America any longer. He’s making the case not for American exceptionalism, but for Spartan exceptionalism.

It’s far worse than anything George W. Bush, the supposed warmonger, ever said. Bush, the alleged fascist, didn’t want to militarize our free country; he tried to use our military to make militarized countries free.

Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. Our warriors surrender their liberties and risk their lives to protect ours. The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I’ve seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President.

The cynical use of the military as analogy by Obama is a perfect demonstration of the Left’s usual approach to non-Leftists — don’t actually engage conservatives, just create your own version of what you think those RacistSexistHomophobicIslamophobicIntolerantFascist cretins are, and engage only that creation. Obama knows he needs to pretend to run-to-the-center and believes that Support the Troops sentiment is borne of envy rather than respect. The SOTU speech was all about envy – military for the conservatives, a 30% minimum tax on millionaires for the left. Obama has so much contempt for conservatives as to adopt Sarah Palin’s “all of the above” approach to energy as his own. What, Barry, you think conservatives wouldn’t notice or just counting on the usual LameStreamMedia to refuse to acknowledge that your “new energy policy” line was lifted whole from conservatives?

Yesterday at my son’s school was “Australia Day” (he came home with a little Australian flag affixed to his backpack with a toothpick). Today is a half day / early release day.

So my question is this: did I sleep through a revolution or something? Or are there new religious observances I need to be made aware of?

I mean, shit. You turn off the cable TV for one day, and suddenly the world stops making sense.

And what’s the market bear these days in Democrat circles for the sale of your civil rights?

A ten spot.

Tell me: is it really too late to bring back a poll tax?

This one from Frank Hagen: “@proteinwisdom If you’re a conservative blogger criticizing Mitt, Newt, or Rick more than Obama, you’re doing it wrong.”

Now, rather than point out that I was all but marginalized and vilified by many on the right in the blogosphere for coming out hard in opposition to Obama — and hard in opposition to those who tried to tell us that his victory meant the “era of Reagan is over,” or that we need to lower our eyes and genuflect before the historic manchild lest we risk appearing bitter and racist, the upshot from which would be to turn the GOP into a “regional party”; and rather than point out the irony of these same people now scolding me as being “unhelpful” for daring to criticize the very GOP status quo, in whose court they obligingly reside, that gave us Obama in the first place; I’ll just say this:

That Obama sure is awful, am I right? Just terrible. The way he’s awful and all? And we need to defeat him, not worry about who we defeat him with. Because frankly, such things are better left to the party king makers. Our job is to keep our attention focused on the common enemy. To post day after day about Obama’s transgressions, and his transgressions alone. Everything else is, well, kind uppity. And unhelpful.

In fact, it means you’re doing it wrong.

So why don’t you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?

Can I get an A-MEN!

– I’m curious why you’d expect me to reward a candidate who, in every election cycle, uses his money and his surrogates and sycophants to level insidious attacks against his opponents — not on the substance of their ideas, but rather in an attempt to smear them personally and, frankly, to ruin them. (The tell came last evening when Romney suggested to Wolf Blitzer that, in fact, Gingrich had indeed used a certain phrase, making his attack valid even if the phrase was taken completely out of context, and he knew it to be out of context.)

Watching the “pragmatic” center-right electability-jackals go after Newt Gingrich the last couple days — in a concentrated, concerted, and organized way — suggests to me that the establishment sector of “our” movement has adopted the worst tactics of the left, which it will use, amazingly, only against those to their right.

That is, these “pragmatists” are willing to smear and demonize conservatives (while pretending to define contemporary conservatism, in that way moving it leftward), and yet they make it their mission to woo the moderates and independents with pleasing panders and populist pablum.

And for this they deserve my vote?

Sorry, but that’s how Obama made his political bones. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to support that kind of behavior just because those reveling in it wear flag lapel pins and check R on their voter registration forms.

In fact, I hope they fail.

Dan Riehl supplies the missing context. Seems like the establishment is going all in to sink Newt and give us Romney. And if they’re unable to, you can bet that they’ll point to a Gingrich defeat — which they’ll help to fuel — as proof that we need to listen to them about which candidates are “electable” going forward.

Here’s the full video of Gingrich on Reagan:

Incidentally, there are many with ties to the Reagan years who are supporting Gingrich and telling a different story. But apparently these folks have escaped the attention of National Review, Ann Coulter, and now, Mr Drudge.

Probably just an oversight, though. Because otherwise we’d almost have to conclude that Drudge, Coulter, NRO, et al are working actively against the man who engineered the Contract with America that gave the GOP the House after 40 years, and working actively for a candidate who continues to support his individual mandate, is for mortgage bailouts (provided you are financed through a GSE), and has hinted, through his advisors, that we can’t really repeal ObamaCare, because there are some really good parts to it that are worth saving and tweaking.

And that would be surreal.

(thanks to John Stephenson)

Looked at logically, it’s a veritable recipe for creating a democratic socialist state run by a liberal fascist dictatorship: take from those who already pay, launder that plunder through the federal government, and give a portion of it to those who already don’t pay.

In such a way do you eventually decrease the number of those who can pay; increase the number of those who can’t; and make all of these reliant on the federal government for their very survival, with the hope that they’ll then “vote their economic interests” — that is, vote for the political party who promises to plunder on their behalf. In large part, the private sector — save for government cronies — disappears — and “income disparity” disappears along with it, leaving only a very wealthy ruling class and the rest of us, who have been regulated and molested into a kind of slavery to the state.

It’s tipping point politics. And it’s craven, anti-American, and quintessentially in keeping with the power relations of Marxism.

But hey: Obama’s got a really swell family! Quite a good man, he is!

Why, yes, yes he is. But only for those already being backed by government sponsored entities. The rest of you can pound sand.

You see, it’s all about how you manage big government. And the ability to manage big government only comes if you can get elected. Which only happens if you pander, and promise to govern like a Democrat — albeit a more responsible, more thrifty Democrat.

That’s the new, more palatable and less “divisive” and “ideological” frame for “conservatism.” Right?

And a less divisive and ideological conservative like Mitt Romney realizes that, regardless of what you say when you’re trying to win over the Hobbits in your base, you can’t take away that that’s been promised — at least, not in its entirety.

Conservatism as pragmatism.

Up is down. Black is white. Bullwinkle is Rocky’s antlered bitch.

I’m feeling surreal in Obama’s America.