The American Spectator

December entered the history books and took all of 2009, much to the relief of a grateful nation. What an Annus Horribilus 2009 turned out to be, despite the haloed presence in the White House of America’s first postmodern president. The Prophet Obama came to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue promising in his signature Solomonic argot that “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

The change has amounted to the largest unemployment level in a generation (more than 10 percent),
the largest peacetime budget deficit in American history ($1.4 trillion), the highest disapproval rating of any elected first-year president (46 percent), and a federal spending frenzy that began with the postmodern president explaining to Congress that he was undertaking it, “Not because I believe in bigger government — I don’t” — postmodern to the utmost! In December he also introduced a postmodern Christmas ceremony. On December 25 he and his wife solemnized the birth of Jesus by attending a sunrise workout at a gym near his rented ($4,000 per night) Hawaiian beach house, to be followed by “a roast beef and potatoes dinner,” presumably later in the day. At the gym he worked on his abs, his pecs, and — of dire necessity — his glutes, upon which he has fallen repeatedly this year in one pratfall after another. December was no different. Mr. and Mrs. Tareq Salahi, the scofflaws (30 outstanding lawsuits since 2004!) accused of gate-crashing the Obamas’ Disneyland-like state dinner for the Indian prime minister, continued to make headlines, bidding fare to become one of the nation’s most famous Democratic families, and a second family was found to have made unauthorized contact with the president in the White House, the Harvey Dardens of Hogansville, Georgia. Then on December 10 the Prophet flew to Oslo, Norway, where he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize to polite applause and hearty laughter way in the back of the auditorium. Only 23 percent of his fellow Americans believe our 44th president deserves the award, and many of them quite possibly hoped he would stay in Norway. A week later he returned to Europe to attend the United Nations’ global warming summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, where it was freezing. Our president did not bring his galoshes or earmuffs so he stayed mostly indoors, trying to avoid the irritable Chinese and Indians and hoping to explain in postmodern terms why it was so cold outside. Perhaps he would have explained, “I am wearing my long johns not because it’s freezing here — it’s not.”

Unfortunately, before making his explanation he had to leave the global warming summit early lest
he be caught in the blizzard that was closing in on Washington, D.C., a city unfamiliar with snow before the global warming forecasts. Once home, our president began almost immediately to pack for Hawaii, but back in Copenhagen the global warmists droned on, finally issuing a “non-binding” denunciation of greenhouse gases. That will be of no help to police in Plymouth, England, who are still trying to establish the identity of that foul miscreant caught 20 times on supermarket surveillance cameras sniffing the hindquarters of a callipygian aisle attendant utterly unaware of his admirer. The attendant can be seen dutifully stacking shelves; unmindful that he has been either the victim of a crime or perhaps the unwilling participant in a skit by one of the Labour government’s many government-funded performance artists. Whatever was going on, the attendant, whose name has been withheld lest he attract other connoisseurs to his aisle, is perplexed. “I had no idea what was going on,” he reports from an undisclosed location. Fortunately, polls from the UK indicate that the Labour government’s days are numbered and with it an end to nosy shoppers.

December was a month of change. It began with Mr. Tiger Woods being recognized internationally as the world’s foremost golfer and ended with him exposed as nothing more than a Republican congressman. Fortunately for Mr. Woods, his wronged wife refused to appear tearfully at his side at an obligatory press conference of atonement. She might have killed him. Reportedly she took a 5 iron to him on Thanksgiving night and the Woods household has no scarcity of golf clubs left, even putters. In another of the month’s changes, former president Jimmy Carter publicly apologized for accusing Israel of “apartheid,” though he has yet to apologize to the American people for the many wrongs he has committed against them, one of which it now appears occurred during his presidency when he obviously served as a role model for young Barry Obama. Meanwhile former president Bill Clinton failed to turn up at Manhattan’s renowned Town Shop, where on December 10 the store was featuring its annual Prima Donna Bra Fitting. Well, Bill, there is always next year.

Another Obama high-level nominee is mired in tax problems. She is Miss Lael Brainard, and fittingly she is another of this administration’s Treasury Department nominees, specifically, under-secretary of the treasury for international affairs. That makes it half a dozen tax cheats to be nominated by the administration, as it prepares to raise taxes on the rest of us. New York senator Charles E. Schumer can be expected to be wearing short-sleeved shirts from now on when he flies the Washington shuttle. Accused of calling a US Airways flight attendant “a bitch” when she barked at him for refusing to turn off his cell phone, as their flight taxied on the runway, he sent out an aide to explain. After protracted negotiations the flunky admitted that the senator made an “off-the-cuff comment under his breath,” as the woman walked away. Actually, he could have come up with a better explanation, for at the time he was seated next to New York’s junior senator, Mrs. Kirsten Gillibrand.

From the Chinese city of Benxi (pronounced chilee-dog) it is reported that that a would-be 23-year-old robber, who threatened restaurant diners by displaying a suicide vest of dynamite sticks wrapped around his midsection, got a good laugh from the police when they discovered that the “dynamite sticks” were actually sausages. “When the experts arrived, they laughed out loud,” explained one of the arresting officers. Then they beat the hell out of him. Mr. Bernard Madoff has gained support from an unlikely source, the Church of England. The Rev. Tim Jones, delivering his Christmas sermon at St. Lawrence Church in York, crooned, “My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift.” He cautioned against stealing “from small family businesses, but from large, national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices,” pilfering is okay. Still, Mr. Madoff’s chances of a Wall Street comeback are unlikely. He has only served six months of his 150-year sentence, and even with time off for good behavior he will remain in the hoosegow for 127 years.

Finally, there is more bad news for the UK’s Labour government. As in the United States the government’s leftist base is growing alienated. For President Obama the cause is that his health care reform will only cost $1 trillion. For Prime Minister Gordon Brown the cause is the Ministry of Defenses promises to shut down the department that it created 60 years ago to investigate Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Mr. Nick Pope, who once headed the project, lamented publicly, “We’re leaving ourselves wide open to terrorist attacks.” Though it is reassuring to hear that there remain some British leftists opposed to terrorist attacks.