It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday.

In an article this long, it's hard to find a pull that summarizes the gist, but I've chosen a single sentence. It's a long read, and worth the extra minutes.

‘The President Was Not Encouraging’: What Obama Really Thought About Biden, by Alex Thompson (Politico)

Behind the friendship was a more complicated relationship, which now drives the former vice president to prove his partner wrong.

Biden aides acknowledge that Obama didn’t do nearly as much for Biden in 2020 as he did for Clinton in 2016.

Drew Magary's epic rant: "Where the Hell Is Barack Obama?"

The anger is justified, for a reason Magary cites yet does little to explore:

"In office, Obama did very little to significantly alter a status quo designed to protect itself."

That's it in a nutshell.

I was an Obama fan in the beginning, and continued to find it useful to invoke his name to dog-whistle the drooling fascists and slack-jawed racists, even after it started becoming clear that little would be accomplished during his eight years in office. It was hard for me to concede this truth.

Obama really did assemble a fan base, which remained largely unused, much as George McClellan built the Army of the Potomac into a powerful military machine that the general refused to take into battle.

Magary hits home:

"The influence that Obama has left on the table (during the pandemic) has been so staggering as to be obscene. What’s even worse is that his void has been filled by a bunch of his former operatives who have used the Obama brand name to burnish their own halos while they do and say patently awful shit."

Just like Clueless Joe Biden. Thing is, all this was obvious while Obama still occupied the office.

Where the Hell Is Barack Obama?, by Drew Magary (Medium)

I’m sick of Obama staying above the fray while that fray is swallowing us whole

My patience with Barack Obama’s patience is at an end. Since leaving office at the beginning of 2017, the former president made it his priority to lay low. Under normal circumstances, no one could begrudge him that choice. He had just been president for eight years. He was tired. His family was tired. He had more than earned the right to fuck off and enjoy himself, especially given the endless stream of bullshit he had to endure as our first black president.

These are far beyond normal circumstances and he no longer has that right. Over 20,000 Americans are dead. In a blink, national unemployment levels are about to blow the Great Depression’s metrics out of the water. States that are on life support have been forced to compete for vital goods because the federal government has abandoned them. Congress is on fucking VACATION. We’re living through a national death spiral. Right now.

So where are you, Barack Obama? I’m not asking that wistfully. This is not a folk song. I wanna know: WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? Oh, Obama is still tweeting good tweets. That’s very nice of him. Know who else is tweeting? All of us. Know what it’s gotten us? NOTHING ...

"Barack Obama is using his post-presidency to attack the Left and protect the status quo."

In the beginning, I was a fan, but in the end, one must allow facts to be facts. It isn't always easy. Maybe we learn something, maybe not. Barack Obama disappointed while in office, and continues to do so amid his post-presidency.

The Real Barack Obama Has Finally Revealed Himself, by Luke Savage (Jacobin)

Barack Obama is using his post-presidency to attack the Left and protect the status quo. The historical myth believed by so many liberals that Obama was a progressive leader who was hemmed in by the presidency's political constraints is collapsing fast.

... Equipped with fame, wealth, and a vast reservoir of residual goodwill Obama now has more power to do good in an hour than most of us do in a lifetime. The demands of etiquette and propriety notwithstanding, he no longer has intransigent Blue Dog senators to appease, donors to placate, or personal electoral considerations to keep him up at night. When he speaks or acts, we can be reasonably certain he does so out of sincere choice and that the substance of his words and actions reflect the real Barack Obama and how he honestly sees the world.

It therefore tells us a great deal that, given the latitude, resources, and moral authority with which to influence events, Obama has spent his post-presidency cozying up to the global elite and delivering vapid speeches to corporate interests in exchange for unthinkable sums of money.

(snip)

When Obama has spoken about or intervened in politics, it’s most often been to bolster the neoliberal center-right or attack and undermine the Left. Having emerged from seclusion to endorse the likes of Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, Obama also rang up Britain’s austerity-loving Conservative prime minister Theresa May on election night in 2017 to offer reassurance and trash the Labour Party’s electoral prospects. Only last week, while denouncing the Democratic Party’s “activist wing,” the former president who had once introduced himself to the nation as a progressive, community-minded outsider inveighed against those pushing for a more ambitious direction — contemptuously instructing a group of wealthy donors not to concern themselves too-much with the irrational zealotry of “certain left-leaning Twitter feeds.”

The Espionage Act: Indicting journalists in a war against freedom of the press.

Then Donald Trump takes power and immediately begins using the playbook refined and sharpened by his predecessor, President Obama.

This isn't a Trump thing or an Obama thing. It's a top-down government power thing, and the unsurprising province of a two-party system power-sharing arrangement.

THE ESPIONAGE AXE: DONALD TRUMP AND THE WAR AGAINST A FREE PRESS (The Intercept)

...Mark Ruffalo [reading Eugene Debs’ speech]: For in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism or religion or both to deceive and overawe the people.

Jeremy Scahill: On June 16, 1918, the prominent Socialist labor leader Eugene Debs delivered a speech in Canton, Ohio. In the speech, Debs argued against U.S. involvement in World War I and he praised activists who had been organizing against the military draft or had been convicted of sedition. At the time, Debs was one of the most prominent socialists in the United States and his speech came on the heels of the Russian Revolution and the rise of global socialist and communist movements. Eugene Debs had run for president four times as of the day of that speech. Here is actor Mark Ruffalo reading part of that speech.

MR [reading Eugene Debs’ speech]: The working class who fight all the battles, the working calls who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses had never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why. Yours but to do and die. That is their motto.

JS: Soon after that speech, Eugene Debs was arrested and he was charged under a new law in the U.S. that had passed just a year earlier. It was called The Espionage Act. Debs and his lawyers argued that his anti-war speech was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. And they lost. And Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison. The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices voted unanimously to uphold the conviction of Eugene Debs. “I believe in free speech, in war as well as in peace,” Debs told the jury during his trial. “If the Espionage Law stands, then the Constitution of the United States is dead.”

From his prison cell, Debs ran for a 5th time for president of the United States on the Socialist Party ticket. He got nearly a million votes, almost three and a half percent — the most ever won by a Socialist at that time. In 1921, President Warren Harding commuted Eugene Debs sentence, but he did not pardon him. Though he did invite Debs to meet him at the White House.

Congress ultimately amended parts of the Espionage Act, but the thrust of the law has remained in effect to this day. Anarchist Emma Goldman was also prosecuted under the act. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed after being convicted under the law ...

This isn't a Trump thing or an Obama thing, either one. It's a power thing, and the province of a two-party system power-sharing arrangement.

Indicting a journalist? What the new charges against Julian Assange mean for free speech, by Julian Borger (The Guardian)

By bringing new charges against the WikiLeaks founder, the Trump administration has challenged the first amendment

By indicting Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, the Trump administration has crossed a line that every other US administration has shied away from: challenging the first amendment in defence of government secrets.

The only reason the 102-year-old act does not criminalise national security journalism is because no administration has sought to put it to the test. The law bans the publication of government secrets and offers no explicit protections to the press under the amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech.

Until now, most legal observers have argued that the law would not survive scrutiny by the supreme court if it were ever used against journalists.

The Obama administration debated whether it could be used against Assange after his organisation, WikiLeaks, published military communications from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as a huge trove of diplomatic cables. But Obama’s team ultimately decided against taking that step.

Matthew Miller, who was a justice department spokesman at the time, recalled: “The justice department in the Obama administration thought it would be very dangerous to charge Assange with publication, as the Espionage Act doesn’t make any distinction between journalists and non-journalists.

“The second reason – which we never got to – was that no one was sure if it would withstand constitutional scrutiny. It probably wouldn’t,” Miller said. “That said, the supreme court has changed significantly since then, and maybe the DoJ [department of justice] has made that calculation” ...

Obama aide: "We’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used."

Sadly accurate.

Dowd refers to a new book by former Obama aide Ben Rhodes, “The World as It Is.”

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton -- on second thought, no. It's just too depressing to contemplate.

Obama – Just Too Good for Us, by Maureen Dowd (NYT)

 ... It is stunning to me, having been on the road with Barack Obama in the giddy, evanescent days of 2008, that he does not understand his own historic rise to power, how he defied impossible odds and gracefully leapt over obstacles.

He did it by sparking hope in many Americans — after all the deceptions and squandered blood and money of the Bush-Cheney era — that he was going to give people a better future, something honest and cool and modern.

But by the end of his second term, he had lost the narrative about lifting up people, about buoying them on economic issues and soothing their jitters about globalization. They needed to know, what’s in it for them?

He pushed aside his loyal vice president, who was considered an unguided missile, and backed a woman who had no economic message and who almost used the slogan, “Because It’s Her Turn.” Then he put his own reputation for rectitude at risk by pre-emptively exonerating Hillary Clinton on the email issue, infuriating federal agents who were still investigating the case.

The hunger for revolutionary change, the fear that some people were being left behind in America and that no one in Washington cared, was an animating force at the boisterous rallies for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Yet Obama, who had surfed a boisterous wave into the Oval, ignored the restiveness — here and around the world. He threw his weight behind the most status quo, elitist candidate.

“I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have seen it coming,” Rhodes writes about the “darkness” that enveloped him when he saw the electoral map turn red. “Because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used: She’s part of a corrupt establishment that can’t be trusted to change.”

Bad time to figure that out.

10 years ago today, Barack Obama was in New Albany.

I hadn't yet joined Facebook, Bank Street Brewhouse didn't exist, and Doug England had only just started his third (and final) term as mayor of New Albany.

It was April 23, 2008, and presidential candidate Barack Obama was in New Albany, Indiana. Not only did Obama go on to become the first ever African-American president, but he even won the state of Indiana in the general election that November.

In short, it was a thousand years ago.

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Today in New Albany: Barack Obama and a full house.


Barack Obama was in New Albany today, appearing for a "town hall" meeting in the Activities Building at Indiana University Southeast. I took a few photos, few of which are presentable.


Progressive Pints were absent, but so was good ol' country cookin', so it was a wash in that department.


There's going to be an Obama event at the Public House on Saturday afternoon. Since the event is still being organized, I can't tell you any more at this point. Stay tuned.

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And a follow-up from April 24, 2008.

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Far better photos from yesterday's Obama visit to New Albany.


That's because I didn't take them. They're either by an anonymous donor or TS. First up is an excellent view of Floyd County party chairman Randy Stumler.


The remainder are of the guest Senator from Illinois. Pick Barack, or select Hillary, but one thing's crystal clear: The GOP catastrophe of eight years running bears immediate correction. Show trials, anyone?

DACA and Congress: "The repeated failure to pass bills has left America with immigration laws that are unenforceable."

Here is a dispassionate and rational editorial stance on DACA and the Dreamers, but will Congress act rationally?

What a wretched place we've become.

Donald Trump is right: Congress should pass DACA (The Economist)

The repeated failure to pass bills has left America with immigration laws that are unenforceable

IF YOU could design people in a laboratory to be an adornment to America they would look like the recipients of DACA. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an executive action issued in 2012 by Barack Obama to protect most of those who were brought to the country as children from deportation, covers about 800,000 people. They are a high-achieving lot. More than 90% of those now aged over 25 are employed; they create businesses at twice the rate of the public as a whole; many have spouses and children who are citizens. They are American in every sense bar the bureaucratic one.

Correcting that ought to be about as hard politically as declaring a new public holiday ...

 ... But the choice on DACA is not between the rule of law and rule by presidential edict. It is between two different types of legal failure—executive actions that are possibly unconstitutional and a set of immigration laws that are definitely impossible to enforce.

The solution ...

 ... is for Congress to write DACA, or something like it, into law. Yet the long-running saga over DACA and its recipients, whose average age is now 25, has been another sign that Congress’s default setting is to inaction. Mr Obama issued his executive action after years of waiting for Congress to write legislation. Congressmen ducked the decision, leading the president to take it unilaterally, on questionable authority.

A sensible conclusion.

Better if the lawmakers who spent years denouncing Mr Obama for grabbing power from Congress now choose to exercise that power themselves. The alternative is an act of economic and moral self-harm, in which Congress would further undermine both itself and the standing of the law.

"Don’t blame it all on racism. During the financial crash Obama sided with the bankers, not people losing their homes – making Trump’s victory possible."

On this most auspicious of days, it bears repeating that I admire Barack Obama immensely as a human being performing a thankless job. We may not see the likes of him again, and that's to be regretted.

However, it's simply inescapable that one must separate the man from the performance, and the legacy of Obama's record is mixed. Posterity will probably enhance this legacy owing to the shambles of what came before it, and what's about to happen next -- that is, if we have anything approximating real news in the future.

The overarching point remains: Without properly understanding what has happened these past eight years, we cannot understand neither why Donald Trump is taking office as president, nor what a proper opposition political organization looks like.

Buckle up. America's about to indulge its inner white trash, and the results are not likely to be therapeutic.

How Barack Obama paved the way for Donald Trump, by Gary Younge (The Guardian)

Don’t blame it all on racism. During the financial crash Obama sided with the bankers, not people losing their homes – making Trump’s victory possible

 ... One cannot blame Obama for Trump. It was the Republicans – craven to the mob within their base, which they have always courted but ultimately could not control – that nominated and, for now, indulges him. And yet it would be disingenuous to claim Trump rose from a vacuum that bore no relationship to the previous eight years ...

 ... There is a deeper connection, however, between Trump’s rise and what Obama did – or rather didn’t do – economically. He entered the White House at a moment of economic crisis, with Democratic majorities in both Houses and bankers on the back foot. Faced with the choice of preserving the financial industry as it was or embracing far-reaching reforms that would have served the interests of those who voted for him, he chose the former.

Cornel West: "The age of Barack Obama may have been our last chance to break from our neoliberal soulcraft."

I was delighted when Barack Obama was elected to the presidency in 2008, and it wasn't only because I viewed him as the lesser of two evils.

Now, eight years later -- eight years older, eight years closer -- it strikes me as important to be honest about Obama's legacy. West's essay nudges us in the direction of a balanced assessment.

I suspect the odds are in favor of posterity viewing Obama's terms in office as positive, especially when compared with the coming tumult.

Personally, I can't help thinking that numerous opportunities were lost.

Pity the sad legacy of Barack Obama, by Cornel West (The Guardian)

Our hope and change candidate fell short time and time again. Obama cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some responsibility

 ... The president’s greatest legislative achievement was to provide healthcare for over 25 million citizens, even as another 20 million are still uncovered. But it remained a market-based policy, created by the conservative Heritage Foundation and first pioneered by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.

Obama’s lack of courage to confront Wall Street criminals and his lapse of character in ordering drone strikes unintentionally led to rightwing populist revolts at home and ugly Islamic fascist rebellions in the Middle East. And as deporter-in-chief – nearly 2.5 million immigrants were deported under his watch – Obama policies prefigure Trump’s barbaric plans.

Bernie Sanders gallantly tried to generate a leftwing populism but he was crushed by Clinton and Obama in the unfair Democratic party primaries. So now we find ourselves entering a neofascist era: a neoliberal economy on steroids, a reactionary repressive attitude toward domestic “aliens”, a militaristic cabinet eager for war and in denial of global warming. All the while, we are seeing a wholesale eclipse of truth and integrity in the name of the Trump brand, facilitated by the profit-hungry corporate media.

"So, no — when Clinton is elected, we will not enter a post-gender society. Instead, we will face another convulsion of bigotry from the defeated foes."

Nine white males on the New Albany Common Council ... and this excellent commentary by the editor of LEO. I usually read Erika Rucker's column, but little else. Maybe it's time to dig a little deeper.

EDITOR’S NOTE: No post-gender society, by Keith Stone (LEO)

Watching the Olympics, you cannot help but be mesmerized by the world-class female athletes who are killing it in their events and showing the world how to take absolutely no shit. Like 19-year-old Lilly King, who matched her outrage over Russian doping with an outrageously-fast, winning swim. Or Simone Biles, who may be the best female gymnast ever and whose performances in Rio drew cheers from teammates and competitors alike. And then there is Simone Manuel, the first African-American woman to win an individual gold medal in swimming.

Maybe their domination presages what could be America’s Year of The Woman. After all, in less than 100 days we choose between Cheeto-wrought, worldwide mayhem and electing the first female president ...

 ... Will we become gender-blind? ... Not.

President Barack Obama speaks to the fact-vs-opinion nature of complete streets in New Albany.

Okay, not really. However, in his address, President Obama makes valuable points about fact versus opinion.

Full text of President Obama's speech at Rutgers commencement, by Mark Mueller (NJ.com)

Which brings me to my third point: Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science -- these are good things. (Applause.) These are qualities you want in people making policy. These are qualities you want to continue to cultivate in yourselves as citizens. (Applause.) That might seem obvious. (Laughter.) That's why we honor Bill Moyers or Dr. Burnell. We traditionally have valued those things. But if you were listening to today's political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from. (Applause.) So, Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be. In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. (Applause.) It's not cool to not know what you're talking about. (Applause.) That's not keeping it real, or telling it like it is. (Laughter.) That's not challenging political correctness. That's just not knowing what you're talking about. (Applause.) And yet, we've become confused about this.

Look, our nation's Founders -- Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson -- they were born of the Enlightenment. They sought to escape superstition, and sectarianism, and tribalism, and no-nothingness. (Applause.) They believed in rational thought and experimentation, and the capacity of informed citizens to master our own fates. That is embedded in our constitutional design. That spirit informed our inventors and our explorers, the Edisons and the Wright Brothers, and the George Washington Carvers and the Grace Hoppers, and the Norman Borlaugs and the Steve Jobses. That's what built this country.

And today, in every phone in one of your pockets -- (laughter) -- we have access to more information than at any time in human history, at a touch of a button. But, ironically, the flood of information hasn't made us more discerning of the truth. In some ways, it's just made us more confident in our ignorance. (Applause.) We assume whatever is on the web must be true. We search for sites that just reinforce our own predispositions. Opinions masquerade as facts. The wildest conspiracy theories are taken for gospel.

Now, understand, I am sure you've learned during your years of college -- and if not, you will learn soon -- that there are a whole lot of folks who are book smart and have no common sense. (Applause.) That's the truth. You'll meet them if you haven't already. (Laughter.) So the fact that they've got a fancy degree -- you got to talk to them to see whether they know what they're talking about. (Laughter.) Qualities like kindness and compassion, honesty, hard work -- they often matter more than technical skills or know-how. (Applause.)

But when our leaders express a disdain for facts, when they're not held accountable for repeating falsehoods and just making stuff up, while actual experts are dismissed as elitists, then we've got a problem. (Applause.)

You know, it's interesting that if we get sick, we actually want to make sure the doctors have gone to medical school, they know what they're talking about. (Applause.) If we get on a plane, we say we really want a pilot to be able to pilot the plane. (Laughter.) And yet, in our public lives, we certainly think, "I don't want somebody who's done it before." (Laughter and applause.) The rejection of facts, the rejection of reason and science -- that is the path to decline. It calls to mind the words of Carl Sagan, who graduated high school here in New Jersey -- (applause) -- he said: "We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good."

Obama in Flint: "The speech in Boston was a pillow. This was a brick through a window."

Leave it to Charlie Pierce to reach the heart of the matter.

Don't Let Trump's Taco Bowl Distract You From Obama's Speech on Flint, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

The president went to Flint on Wednesday. He should have gone there long before this, and there was something unsettling about his conspicuously taking a drink of water, although I don't think it was as bad as Michael Moore does. But what may have gone unnoticed—especially by Ron Fournier, who went to Flint and filtered what he learned through his special Both Sides Do It filtering mechanism—is that the president took a big old sledgehammer to the philosophical foundation of 40 years of conservative political vandalism.

Just this pull.

But volunteers don't build county water systems and keep lead from leaching into our drinking glasses. We can't rely on faith groups to reinforce bridges and repave runways at the airport. We can't ask second-graders, even ones as patriotic as Isiah Britt who raised all that money, to raise enough money to keep our kids healthy. You hear a lot about government overreach, how Obama—he's for big government. Listen, it's not government overreach to say that our government is responsible for making sure you can wash your hands in your own sink, or shower in your own home, or cook for your family. These are the most basic services. There is no more basic element sustaining human life than water. It's not too much to expect for all Americans that their water is going to be safe.

Trump, Obama and the enduring lure of "populist nationalism."

It's worth it for the Voltaire quote, which I haven't seen for many a moon.

Trump and Obama: A Night to Remember, by Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker)

Once, and only once, in 2011, have I attended the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., on the grounds, as I explained then, that Voltaire is said to have cited when he declined a second invitation to an orgy: once a philosopher, twice a pervert. Luckily for the philosopher in me, it turned out to be an auspicious night. Not only, as we did not know then, was President Obama in the midst of the operation that would lead shortly to Osama bin Laden’s killing; it was also the night when, despite that preoccupation, the President took apart Donald Trump, plastic piece by orange part, and then refused to put him back together again.

There's a far deeper side to this. It's the enduring lure of what the author calls "populist nationalism."

Nor is it at all surprising to find a billionaire businessman representing this ideology, because it is not really members of the economic élite who are its villains—it is the educated élite, and the uneducated outsiders, who are. It is, on the historical record, much more a response to the ceaseless anxieties of modern life than to any financial angst of the moment. Probably the best student of this modern ideology is the conservative historian John Lukacs, whose 2005 book “Democracy And Populism: Fear and Hatred” makes clear how different the nationalist formula is from patriotism properly so called: it rests not on a sense of pride in place or background but in an intense sense of victimization. The cry of the genuine patriot is, Leave us alone to be the people we have always been. The populist nationalist cries, We have been cheated of our birthright, and the Leader will give it back.

The ideology is always available; it just changes its agents from time to time.

No, Mayor Gahan, Indatus is not one of the "indie" bands playing at Bicentennial Park this summer.

Contributed by a friend, who is absolutely on target.

On Thursday, President Obama will visit a business that should could have stayed in New Albany if New Albany had a plan to install fiber optic and infrastructure support for tech savvy companies.

Indatus added 100 new jobs to their staff when they moved from New Albany - good paying jobs.

We'll get a pool not yet paid for, (although) it may be paid for with higher taxes levied on a shrinking population in a decade or two ...

In the mean time, Obama will visit, inspect and praise a high tech business in Louisville that could have easily stayed in New Albany if there had been a proactive plan to retain, attract and support the kinds of jobs that build a city up.

Our city's plan? Maintain a decaying, declining status quo.

"The best worst president ever."

The propensity to laugh out loud comes even more quickly when the speaker is a chicken announcing its eternal fidelity to Colonel Sanders.

The old angry white guys don't want to think about economics, even if their daily working lives are testament to the sacrifices necessary to maintain the 1%.

The old angry white guys just want someone to tell them that it's okay to hate their pre-selected  convenient targets, ranging from the gays to the coloreds to the ragheads.

I'm an old angry white guy, too. It's just that I reserve my anger to be directed at the old angry whiye guys. They embarrass me, and I wish they'd either grow up or ... that's right ... move to Putin's goddamm Russia if they don't like it here.

NOTES & ERRATA BY MARK MORFORD: The best worst president ever (SF Gate)

“Obama is the worst thing to ever happen to this country,” declares the wealthy, rakish, silver-haired Newport Beach white guy to his small group of perfectly tanned 50-something females sitting just a few feet away from us at a stunning restaurant patio overlooking the sun-kissed California coastline, just off of Highway 1, as he sipped his pinot and adjusted his wraparound Ray Bans, flush from the economy’s spectacular recovery that has benefitted his exact demographic most of all, stroking his purebred dog and taking various selfies with their $500 phones, oblivious to the furious swirls of irony and hypocrisy fluttering just above their heads.

I laughed out loud. Couldn’t help it; I had just overheard Mr. Newport Beach say something about how Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster (despite how, of course, it’s not), and if America were to somehow actually develop a health care system similar to, say, Canada’s, that would be the end of America for certain; we’d never recover from such a devastating blow. Or something. And then came the “worst thing to ever happen” quip, and I couldn’t hold back.

"One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist."

Pshaw; that's nothing.

In New Albany, about three in four office holders believe that the city's street grid is limited to its current configuration by the U.S. Bill of Rights, and that speeding on streets designed for speeding is a law enforcement issue, not a design issue.

But didn't we just have this chat on Twitter?

Has there ever been a nation, rich or poor, prouder to be dumb than this one? I don't think so. Fortunately, I maintain a sizable stock of medicinal antidote, most of it in handy 13.2 gallon drums called "kegs," and while it can't improve THEIR decision making, at least it keeps me nicely sedated amid the lunacy.

Sometimes I think to myself, ya know, if I just stopped drinking I could really help change this place -- then I shrug, say "nah," and remember that it's really not worth it.

Actually, no booze is required to see why we're as dumb as we are: In our thoroughly rigged "free" market, consumerism is king, and consumers need to be kept stupid and indebted so they don't catch on and see the dudes behind the curtains with the levers in their hands.

Rant over. Speaking of circuses, what time do the basketball games start this weekend?

One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist, survey says, by Paul Harris (Guardian)

About one in four Americans suspect that President Barack Obama might be the antichrist, more than a third believe that global warming is a hoax and more than half suspect that a secretive global elite is trying to set up a New World Order, according to a poll released on Tuesday.

Inauguration 3: "Obama's Inauguration Speech: A Primer."

When even a conservative commentator like David Brooks is compelled to concede that Barack Obama’s second inaugural speech "surely has to rank among the best of the past half-century," one making a strong "argument for a pragmatic and patriotic progressivism," then it's been a fairly good day. As usual, Charlie Pierce gets pride of place in summarizing Barack Obama's speech.

Obama's Inauguration Speech: A Primer, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

... The president's second inaugural address was as clear a statement of progressive principles as a president has given since LBJ got up there and shoved the Voting Rights Act and the words "We shall overcome" right up old Richard Russell's ass in 1965 ...

... The speech was a bold refutation of almost everything the Republican party has stood for over the past 40 years. It was a loud — and, for this president, damned near derisive — denouncement of all the mindless, reactionary bunkum that the Republicans have come to stand for in 2013; you could hear the sound of the punch he landed on the subject of global warming halfway to Annapolis. But the meat of the speech was a brave assertion of the power of government, not as an alien entity, but as an instrument of the collective will and desires of a self-governing people.

Inauguration 2: "The President liberals were waiting for is (finally) here."

Maybe, maybe not. That scratching sound you hear is coming from the heels of right-wing obstructionists, digging in.

The President liberals were waiting for is (finally) here, by Chris Cillizza (Washington Post)

... The question going forward is whether President Obama will make good on the progressive agenda he outlined today. Does he push hard on climate change or some sort of broader energy policy? Does he cut a deal with Republicans on immigration reform or go it alone believing they will follow? On guns, will he accept a smaller-bore version of the legislative proposals he outlined last week or go for the whole enchilada (or something close to it)?

Those questions are, at the moment, impossible to answer. What we do know: In his second inaugural speech, President Obama forcefully embraced the sort of progressive agenda for which liberals — and Democrats more broadly — have long pined.

Inauguration 1: "We are made for this moment."

It was a day for celebration and mirth, because there's nothing quite like angry disgruntled "look at me" white guys to double me over with laughter, especially when they can only communicate only through incoherent grunts and Facebook memes.

My advice is to man up and get on with it. I've made it through Nixon, Ray-Gun and two Bushes (oddly enough, Bush Elder wasn't all that bad) ... and lemme tell you, you'll survive. Drink better quality alcohol. It helps.

Instead of howling at the moon, rigging the Electoral College and stockpiling ammo, how's about picking up some litter or something, er, almost communal, if you know what I mean.

Obama's second inauguration: 'We are made for this moment'

• President vows to reclaim the spirit of founding fathers
• Gay rights, climate change and immigration mentioned
• Crowd of about half a million watches Washington swearing-in

By Ewen MacAskill (Guardian)

... Attempting to debunk the rightwing interpretation of the constitution that has held sway in the US, Obama, in what became a near constant refrain throughout his speech, said the founding fathers did not intend the country to become enslaved by the constitution and that patriotism was not the preserve of the right.

"That is our generation's task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness.," Obama said.

It was down to the current generation to make the principles a reality, he declared. "For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing."

Franklin Graham foams at the mouth. Rabid theology the presumed cause.

We've already glanced at a localized context of evangelistic outrage at this year's election results. Rather like Multichins McConnell's vow to devote all his energies to making Barack Obama a one-term president (epic fail), and resembling those super patriots now vowing to detach themselves from the object of their congenital chest-thumping, now the preachers all are going to be praying not for "god's" supposed bounty, but for mass destruction.

However, as is customary in cases of divine appeal, these catastrophic yearnings are redundant. Unaddressed climate change should do the trick quite nicely, and it's a man-made phenomenon.

Franklin Graham: God May Have to Cause "A Complete Economic Collapse" to Save Nation From Obama, by David Corn (Mother Jones)

... As Graham denounced the Obama years, Newsmax's Kathleen Walter asked, "So we've become too secular a nation? How do we bring God back into government?" Graham replied:

Maybe God will have to bring our nation down to our knees—to where you just have a complete economic collapse. And maybe at that point, maybe people will again begin to call upon the name of almighty God.

Economic calamity was the one option Graham mentioned—as if only such a disaster could move the United States in the right direction.