It's official

I found a sign of how bad things are in a Foxnews.com headline:

White House claims only tiny fraction of bailout package is being debated, but key Democratic senator tells FOX News he wants to strip 'tens of billions' from proposal.

You know it's bad when the two people making these statements are both completely correct.

Ah, elitism...

Tam 1, Mr. Messiah 0.

Where oh where are the media's veiled insinuations of the evilness of the president for doing something so anti-environment? Oh that's right, they're too busy extolling the new White House culture—it's much less harsh now, much more smiley and happy and fuzzy. And warm.

Darker days are coming

On this, the eve of the ascension of the Obamamessiah and the final day of Bush's presidency, Donald Sensing's words from 2003 ring true:

The Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free.

There were no viable options in the 2008 election, either, and this time the American populace picked the greater of two evils. Even darker days for liberty are coming, but it's a mistake to give up. Liberty is worth fighting for.

Redefining words, Obama style

Apparently Mr. B. H. Obama has a different definition of the word "ask" than most people:

I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States.

Because apparently what he means by that is:

I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service.

We'll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities. At the community level, we'll develop public-private partnerships so students can serve more outside the classroom.

So in Obamaland, "asking for your service" means "manipulating low-level bureaucrats [i.e., school district board members] into forcing you to serve."

No, wait, maybe it means something else:

For college students, I have proposed an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000. To receive this credit, we'll require 100 hours of public service.

So "asking for your service" could also mean "manipulating you into serving by promising that you'll get other people's money."

Truly visionary leadership. I can't believe this hasn't been tried before. Maybe with a little more effort we'll be able to turn out model citizens!

(H/T Jonah Golberg, via Insty)