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.
