Welcome back to the Fourth Grade.

Barack Obama has decided that fiery self defense and withering mockery of Republicans are the best modes of attack as he tries to save Democrats from a drubbing in November’s mid-term elections.

Absent any reality-based defense of the dismal results his policies have delivered, the Smartest President Ever is returning to his original dance partner: rhetorical flourish.

Naturally, his minions in the press are swooning.

His swipes at Republicans and calls for change were a reminder of stump skills that few US politicians can match, recalling his 2008 campaign.

The AFP article then goes on to dutifully parrot the talking points without the faintest hint of examining their veracity. There is some allusion to the fact that things aren’t looking great for the Democrats but, again, there’s no speculation about whether the president might have something to do with that.

Let’s give the press credit where credit is due. The reporter digs deep and ponders the president’s motive for being snotty instead of eloquent.

Obama adopted a sarcastic tone, rarely seen back then, likely distilled from months of frustrating political combat in Washington.

The implication here is that it’s perfectly acceptable for President Obama to be whiny and cranky because he’s had such a tough time with Capitol Hill politics.

History tells us, of course, that the job is nothing but love and hugs for other presidents.

It makes sense for President Obama to return to the tactics that worked so magically in 2008 that it seemed as if he was educated at Hogwarts and not Harvard. The question now is whether there’s still magic in the wand or has it been irrevocably damaged by pointing it backwards at George W. Bush and not pointing it to the future as he did in 2008?

Candidate Barack Obama had plenty of bad things to say about his opponents in 2008 but his breakout momentum all came from the gooey, Oprah-friendly speeches about “hope” and a “new way” in American politics. People who previously shunned politics became zealous campaigners for the man who would change everything and make the world one big day at Disneyland. The politics of emotion that had become the hallmark of the American left had reached its zenith, propelling a man whose résumé was thinner than an Olsen twin after a purge day to the highest office in the land.

One of the reasons that the “political combat” has been so frustrating for President Obama is that he soon found out that the people who pay attention after elections aren’t mesmerized by pithy, empty speech-writing tricks the way his “Yes, we can!” hordes were. He’d spent so much time never really having to say anything that it was burdensome when he finally did.

Accountability is a fact of life for presidents yet this one seems to think he can throw a road block up at the end of George W. Bush’s second term keep it there. His “withering mockery” play is nothing but an extraordinarily tired reworking of the “Bush’s fault!” template that’s been used ad nauseam to explain away every glaring failure of the Obama administration. The press needs to understand that “juvenile blame” and “fiery self defense” are two very different things.

The Obama phenomenon in 2008 drew strength from newbies and disillusioned independents who were willing to be led almost anywhere, as long as it was away from the status quo. It was easy to make them nod first and hope they didn’t think later. Like a hungry college kid dreaming about Top Ramen, these people weren’t really craving substance so Barack Obama and his stump skills were perfect for them.

Without Obama being on the ticket, the likelihood isn’t great that the newbies are hanging around and the independents, according to every poll, have had enough ramen. The president’s snarky name-calling will naturally draw laughs when he’s preaching to the choir but will it move the people he needs to vote for Democratic candidates in November? Can a steady diet of derision motivate the way visions of an idyllic future do?

For some reason, Team Lightbringer seems to think so. My guess is that they hope constantly reminding everyone of what it was like leading up to November 2008 will make them get in a November 2008 state of mind. It sounds ridiculous but so does the notion that massive government involvement in health care will introduce efficiency and cost reductions.

Before conservatives get too comfortable, however, we shouldn’t discount the shelf-life of this approach as long as the press is complicit in automatically repeating whatever the administration wants put out there. I don’t know how many times I saw clips of Obama’s speech at the Harry Reid fundraiser last weekend that had absolutely no follow-up examination of the claims being made (even on Fox News).

This plan of attack by the Obama administration is perhaps the only transparent thing we’ve seen from it but that doesn’t mean people who aren’t predisposed to being leery regarding the president will notice how weak it is.

We can only hope their necks get tired from turning around to look at the past before November.

Maybe not but, hey, it’s a start.

As Michelle Malkin says, good for all of them.

I also agree with the esteemed Ms. M that there is no way in hell this would have happened if Martha Coakley was going to be the next Senator from Massachusetts.

Honestly, today’s meeting between President Obama and members of the House GOP wasn’t nearly as awful as I thought it would be. I watched some of the beginning and some of the end, getting a run in during the middle (I knew I’d have the time with that many politicians in one room, all trying to make a point). Here are some quick observations about the kind of thing I wouldn’t mind seeing more of.

The president spoke of getting away from talking points and paying closer attention to how politicians spoke about one another in public. He also mentioned that the media prefers to report about red meat than platitudes. All are valid points. My fervent hope is that the president will review video of these remarks the next time he is preparing for a town hall packed with fawning Democratic plants. There’s a bit of “walk the talk” that needs to be done here before I can start cheering but I’m in an uncharacteristic benefit-of-the-doubt mood today.

While going over the common ground he and the GOP supposedly share on health care reform, he brought up his willingness to look at tort reform as part of an overhaul. He did bring this up on more than one occasion early on in the process. I’m a bit skeptical of his assertion that he didn’t get many nibbles from the Republicans on the matter but I also don’t remember many of them publicly holding him to it. Health care reform without a tort reform component is pure folly and it would behoove the GOP to keep reminding the president of his position.

That, however, is a huge part of this problem. The Republicans who were meeting with the president today are, for the most part, the Titanic crew that got us into this minority. Forgive my ability to remember more than twelve months back but I can’t take any of them seriously when they stomp their feet about egregious spending.

GOP leadership has whined incessantly (and rightfully) about being shut out of the negotiations. Given their lack of spending restraint in recent years, who can guarantee that they would behave responsibly if given a greater voice? Let’s just say I’m in the “Cone of Dubious” on that one. I can easily envision Democratic leadership passing out earmarks and sweetheart deals to many of the current crop of Republicans and seeing nothing but tail-wagging enthusiasm. That smell from the back of the room is John Boehner still burping up his crap sandwich almost a year and a half later.

As a registered Republican and an active Tea Party guy, I am not overcome by warm feelings when thinking about ANY politician who has been spending tax payer money as if it’s theirs. I know we can’t replace everybody at once but it’s a nice fantasy to get one through the day.

The biggest problem in Washington was mentioned often during this meeting and dodged by President Obama. There are, actually, many reasonable and sane people in Washington, D.C.

The Speaker of the House is not one of them.

Time and again, Republicans complained of being stonewalled by the frightening visage of the Botox Hag. The president didn’t really promise to try and do something about Pelosi, confirming my suspicion that everyone in Washington is terrified of her.

This could, of course, be a calculated ploy by Mr. Obama. He shows up, gives the “Why can’t we all just get along?” speech to the bitter-clingers then tosses the heavy partisan lifting to the Hound of Hell. If When she undoes all of his goodwill, he can simply throw up his hands and shrug, giving a sheepish “I can’t control her” grin and he’s off the hook.

It’s difficult to say how all of this will play out. All I know is that I would much rather see the president meeting on camera with the GOP (thus holding them all accountable) than meeting with the Democrats and union leaders in an undisclosed, cash-hemorrhaging, location.

In Obama space, no one can hear you scream.

Voters aren’t happy with the latest tax proposed to help pay for the trillion-dollar national health care plan, and they’re even unhappier with exempting labor unions from that tax.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 33% of U.S. voters support enacting a significant excise tax on the most expensive health insurance plans provided by employers.

Sixty-three percent (63%) oppose the excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” health insurance plans, up five points from late December. Only 10% Strongly Support it and 42% Strongly Oppose the excise tax.

The idea becomes even less appealing once Obama’s back room deal with his union handlers is factored in.

Labor unions, an important constituency in the Democratic Party, complained about the excise tax because many of their members have such “Cadillac” health plans as part of collective bargaining agreements. To keep union support for the overall health care plan, President Obama and Democratic leaders agreed last week to exempt union members from the tax for five years and modify it in other ways so they don’t pay as much.

Voters really frown on that action. Only 27% support the excise tax if it exempts union members, while 70% are opposed. But even more significantly, if the union members are exempt 11% Strongly Support the tax while 51% Strongly Oppose it.

One year into this great hope and change experiment, and the day after a Republican won the bluest of all Senate seats, it’s still probably too much to ask that the president and the rest of the Democrats actually pay attention to the people who elected them.

Wait, did I say “probably”? My coffee must be laced with something.

As the country woke up to a new political landscape the morning after the Massachusetts special election, the White House tried to balance a tone of contrition with a message that the Obama administration believes it still has a mandate.

Of course, any sober person (even members of the uneducated class, David Brooks!) knows that the “mandate” Team Lightbringer believes it has never existed in the first place. It’s an illusion, like greater efficiency being introduced into the health care system through federal involvement.

There’s no time to enjoy Scott Brown’s victory as there is more work to be done now. It’s obvious that this group isn’t going to get it until they’re unemployed. They began with a delusional agenda that no amount of reality will ever interfere with.

Unless it happens in the voting booth.

Let’s hope Marc Ambinder is into yoga or he might sprain something after all this twisting.

Trent Lott resigned; Harry Reid should resign.

Logicians call the above remark, from Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), an argument from false or weak analogy. In Washington, it happens to be a reflexive, almost instinctive identity protection mechanism.

In this case, it is the effort to analogize the circumstances that led to Trent Lott’s resignation as majority leader in 2002 with the remarks made by majority leader Harry Reid in 2008 (and published in 2010). As with most weak analogies, “proof” is induced from a reading of superficial similarities: both men said something about race, both men are majorities leaders. Once the analogy is employed, the events are linked, and disparate treatment could only suggest nefarious motives: media bias, usually, or double standards, or something unfair.

The argument is based not only on illogic but on how easy it is to exploit the tendency among human beings to seek patterns. A priori — that is, before we get to the facts of the matter, analogies, even when valid, don’t provide proof of anything. Weak analogies, in particular, tend to eclipse — or are intended to eclipse — a rational assessment of the facts and they obscure meaningful differences in time, place and motive.

Admittedly, it is always fun to trot out the material learned after one’s first Logic 101 exam and validate those youthful moments spent paying attention to something. Ambinder makes a fairly decent case about the argument from false or weak analogy if you ignore the fact that he’s making an argument from a false premise, which was also on that same Logic 101 test.

The mistake many of us on the right made was in bringing up the Trent Lott incident in the first place because it gave the left one of their beloved distractions from the real point to dance around. Any time they can get you caught up in a side argument about anything else they’ve won three quarters of the battle.

After deconstruction the Lott/Reid analogy, Ambinder attempts to defend the obvious double standard being employed. His false premise is that, contextually, one remark was racist and one was not. Poor Harry, you see, was merely expressing “his excitement about a black presidential candidate”.

Really? Then explain why the most powerful man in the United States Senate from, thank you David Brooks, the educated class couldn’t praise this black candidate’s education or legislative achievements? Is it because Reid is merely a stunningly inarticulate man (a somewhat easy case to make)? Perhaps he’s just “from another generation”.

No, like it or not lefties, Reid went there. Ambinder takes the logic he applies at the beginning of the piece and tortures it to come to the conclusion that Reid was simply excited.

In expressing his excitement about Barack Obama by essentially saying “he doesn’t look or sound very black” Reid revealed some underlying racism that can’t be undone with a legislative eraser.

Of course, the elephant (no GOP/Dem pun intended) in the room is the fact that, by viewing everything and everyone in terms of race and ethnicity, leftists are far more racist than they understand. It is impossible for them to just see “people”. Everyone has to be racially and ethnically hyphenated, which does nothing but perpetuate and strengthen divisions.

Which is precisely what they need to scare people in election years.

This is what happens when you try to mainstream the short-bus bureaucracy.

Ed generously refers to the federal “helpers” as obtuse. If the federal bureaucracy was a school kid, it would be held back in kindergarten in perpetuity.

The “predatory lenders” we heard so many on the Left caterwauling about when the first ton of manure hit the meltdown fan last year were, more often than not, merely puppets in the Democrat-forced redistribution frenzy.

One of the main prerequisites for buying a ticket on the Big Government train is the ability to ignore history (unless it’s something you want to blame George W. Bush for…). If this had all happened a decade or two ago the repetition of the same formula for disaster would be ill-advised or just plain stupid. For it to happen again almost immediately is unconscionably criminal.

“Ginnie is like an accelerant to a fire,” said Anthony Sanders, professor of real estate finance at George Mason University.

Of course, Team Lightbringer knows of only one fire retardant when it comes to economics: taxpayer money.

We’re begging, don’t help any more.

I may have been a bit underground and under the weather the past week but I’m making up for it on Friday (11/20/09). In conjunction with New York Entrepreneur Week, I’ll be participating in an online conversation as an “un-panelist” through an absolutely ingenious new platform called SnazL. I’m just going to give a quick overview of what’s going on and how anyone can participate but if you want more info here’s a HuffPo write-up about it all.

I’m going to be talking about the social media odyssey I’ve been on recently and how it’s managed to dovetail with political activism and stand-up. In a perfect world, this all would have happened by design but I live on Earth so it’s one big happy accident after another here in this ‘hood.

Starting at 3:30 EST, I’ll be available at the above SnazL link to talk about this journey with anyone who wants to show up. The fun part about SnazL is that everyone can interact in more ways than one. Got a video link of something (yes, even another comic) that you want to make part of the conversation? Drop it in. Just click on “Start SnazLing” and the videos will play while we’re all chatting. You can submit video questions if you want or just antagonize me. This is perfect for all the Twitter lefties who have been dying to unload on me. Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that it can be a free-for-all with me depending on my mood and the amount of vitriol coming from the trolls. We’re just looking for a more “face-full-of-Kruiser” approach for the un-panel.

I scheduled this for Friday so all of my regular tweeps could escape #FollowFriday hell for a while and still hang out online. I still don’t know what to expect but that is my favorite way to head into any weekend.

For those of you who couldn’t handle the trip away from this site to another, the still unfinished SnazL is embedded below. The reason for seemingly gratuitous videos of me will be explained tomorrow.