Your pals all lived on your floor, eclectic and stimulating extracurricular activities practically found you, and keg-centric weekend entertainment was three bucks and a stumble away.  Also, there was the potential for learning during spare time.  Yeah, it was awesome.  Go, my alma mater!

But the unrelenting hangover that is adulthood seemingly remains inevitable.  We eventually must leave Milwaukee’s Best behind and advance to where we can afford beer that doesn’t taste like drainage runoff.  Sigh: I’m talking about becoming a grownup.  You can only stall after getting your diploma for a decade or so.

The only alternative to facing a reality of alarm clocks and workplace drudgery is to pursue employment that resembles a perpetual 15-credit course load.  Thankfully, smart-alecky freelancer is one; I can shave at my leisure and subsist on whatever can be microwaved.

But there’s a somewhat more prominent job that’s frighteningly conducive to the same mindset: depending upon the officeholder’s disposition, the job of free world leader can be morphed to approximate undergraduate life.  With that in mind, Barack Obama views his term as eight semesters.

He couldn’t be normal and go for an MBA or declare a third major if he liked academics that much.  Nope: Obama is turning the White House into Animal House just so he can never leave campus.

Worst, it’s a domesticated Animal House, as he’s not even trying to relive wobbly three-day weekends every weekend.  Instead, Obama was one of the odd dweebs who went to college because he liked class so much.

To be fair, who wouldn’t enjoy such a safely brainy haven?  University classrooms exist inside a bubble where every problem just needs an honors student to solve it.  For one, kids who wore shirts with collars to class know that we could scrub pollution and expand the economy by subsidizing green jobs.  Excepting for how it’s utterly counterproductive to warp the market in response to a non-environmental crisis, it’s brilliant in theory. 

Further, he conjured a formula in a basement lab to counter unemployment and economic upheaval, namely letting the feds exhaust every dollar you make.  It had to work: jobs follow investment, right?  Plus, jobs mean money!  Duh.

Such a profound truth is settled, even though it’s not thanks to how same initial outlay was confiscated from earners or borrowed from abroad in order to be spent by the fatally incompetent federal monopoly.  The result, namely perpetual double-digit unemployment, only shocks Ivy Leaguers.

Reality is mean that way.  Obama is too smart to accept that life doesn’t always flow smoothly.  Logic should fix everything, which is why he gets peevish every single time something bad happens under his watch.

Unfortunately, the impression he creates by pouting in the face of adversity is that he didn’t read the job description closely, not to mention that it seems as if he’s new to his human skin.  It’s his task to respond to and maybe fix some of the junk that happens, although he should have learned that during the interview process.

Most particularly, coping with this Gulf gush is such a hassle.   The leak should respond to wise federal planning, but it instead continues to petulantly sully federal waters.  How is the president supposed to implement his ploys for eternal sunshine when liquid darkness rises unabated from the Earth’s crust?

It’s ultimately our fault, of course: we’re hypocrites who love gasoline in our vehicles but not oil in our water.  Still, he could maybe take a temporary break from checking putting greens for tar ball contamination.

Man, he could accomplish much if there weren’t all these problems.  That’s also why Obama seems so put out when dealing with Islamic terrorists that attempt to destroy airliners or Times Square.

Addressing deeds aimed to cause chaotic mass murder seems like a chore to him, as he’d clearly rather be having a heart-to-heart rap session with coeds in a dorm stairwell.  There, he could explain how reaching out to our adversaries would end conflict if only we had a president willing to offer a hand.  I wonder if we’ll ever elect someone to try it; we’ll then see how it goes.

Oh, right: that’s him.  Remember that we’re not supposed to blanch when the former law school lecturer suggests that the miserable thugs need hugs.  Plots to slaughter innocents by the thousands will disappear if we can only learn to make those potential jihadists understand that we’re good guys.

Failing that, we can at least copy the market-destroying nonsense of mere commie thugs.  Notoriously, he portrays our aforementioned debt overlords in China as the epitome of clean energy generation despite the fact that the lone source of entertainment across their countryside is wallowing in filth.  Going green is easy when citizens have no money to buy fuel, not to mention any other stuff.

As for Obama’s other preferred international goons, he clearly cribbed off Cuba when it came to his health scheme.  And why not?  Eliminating greedy businessmen from the transaction should lead to better care, at least according to the results of many Introduction to Public Policy group projects.

His fellow Americans were supposed to docilely concur that a massive insurance renovation was utterly necessary.  But we’re apparently not sharp enough to know that dreadful care accompanied by a 37 jillion dollar deficit in lieu of simply buying what we need from insurers would be bad for us.

We’ll never agree with him on anything.  The Undergrad in Chief remains dismissive of conservatives, largely because he can’t believe they exist.  Those warmongers didn’t even want to celebrate their 18^th birthdays by chilling in the library and discussing the merits of a planned economy with other progressive students, so how can they be trusted?

He despises political conflict, as it’s a sign that others don’t possess enough sense to agree with him.  Obama wants everyone to respect his recitation-style brilliance.

The incumbent acquired a different academic lesson from someone more interested in winning class elections and learning from losing student council presidential races.  Namely, Bill Clinton spent his post-high school studies learning that he was willing do anything to remain popular and get re-elected, even if it eventually meant doing something sensible like cutting off eternal welfare benefits.  Chief Bubba spent his Georgetown time figuring how to win the next election when he wasn’t hitting on curvier lady librarians.

Conversely, Obama became proficient at stubbornness while obtaining his various degrees.  He inches toward the center just enough to shoehorn his modified dreams through an anxious Democratic congressional majority.  Thornily, his side of Congress is streaked with senators and representatives who aren’t as ideological as the executive on account of how they have to attract voters who have or had jobs.

Citizens with bills and mortgages they actually intend on paying off don’t look kindly upon politicians telling them their incomes and lives aren’t quite regulated enough.  Sadly for the president, he doesn’t sympathize with such piddling concerns as staying afloat: he made more slapping his name on books others likely wrote than he does at his current job, suckas.

So, we’re stuck with an alleged leader who won’t stray far from his law school commons ideals.  Life is about coping with difficulties as opposed to enjoying uninterrupted prosperity; many people learn the unpleasant but inescapable reality during college.  But Obama picked up a far different mentality in quad-adjacent buildings, as he schemed to perfect a world from which he was entirely isolated.

School taught Obama to remain sheltered.  After all, he was elected president at age 47 while having spent a huge chunk of his time before then in sundry campus halls.  He didn’t exactly dodge much trauma before he captured the presidency at any point in his adult life.  Debating Hillary Clinton doesn’t count.

The cushy-living president seems like the sort of parent who complains that the Harry Potter books are too dark for his children, as he wants a fantasy world of safe wizardry to which kids can escape.  Next, he’ll legally mandate that the sad parts be redacted from the final film.  We can all dream of a world without nightmares.

Obama’s embrace of the theoretical demonstrates that he may as well be serving his term back in Morningside Heights.  If he shifted his residence to where he’s already mentally residing, the president could revert to writing papers on Friday nights and actually visiting professors during office hours.

Picture Obama sitting enthralled as ancient doctorate holders regale him with tales of the disparity between the opulent and the poor or Imperial Britain’s wickedness, and his term’s course suddenly makes sense in its perverse way.  He clearly took notes, too.

Our eternally collegiate president was and is the worst sort of suck-up, namely the type who thinks that every single calamity can be solved with cogent planning from degree-laden paper geniuses stationed a thousand miles away.  Obviously, he’s the one most capable of doing said planning.  Your president is such an outstanding scholar that he doesn’t even need to release his transcripts to prove it.

In the meantime, we’re stuck with the least fun, most unpleasant sort of undergraduate: Obama is a Democratic Party animal.  If you encounter one at a university house soiree, it’s a sign to bolt back to your dorm and drink in your room.

Anthony Bialy is a freelance writer and “Red Eye” Conservative in Western New York.  He blogs at http://thebuffalobean.com and tweets at http://twitter.com/AnthonyBialy.

But every solution is straightforward if you happen to be a head of state who’s also worlds smarter than anyone else in same state.  Apparently, he thinks all it takes to attain good government is properly inputting the numbers into a calculator.  Woodrow Wilson and the Roosevelts either didn’t possess the technology or weren’t as awesome at efficient planning.  Also, no earlier progressive-minded president was blessed with Rahm Emanuel’s help.

Whatever the reason, Obama remains possessed by the peculiar blend of earnest idealism and adoration for bureaucracy’s practical drudgery that also overtook many Bill Clinton supporters in 1992.  To the incumbent and the last of his dwindling adherents, establishing a Federation of Planets-style munificent government is just a matter of benevolent leaders working competently.  The same administration that has spent countless billions in an effort that increased unemployment is supposed to be well-intentioned enough to create utopia.

Their other efforts are working about as well.  Take the Nuclear Posture Review’s restrictions on our right to threaten desperados.  Obama feels he can install global peace by declaring that nuclear weapons are bad and we don’t even want to really have them, much less use them.

Unfortunately, assuring other nations that we only nuke back will embolden shady leaders to obtain chemical, biological, or powerful conventional weapons, all of which they can now use without fear of finding themselves stuck within a rather toasty and toxic mushroom cloud.  Obama should but doesn’t know that weakening the rules will fail to affect cheaters.

As for domestic worries, the threat of catastrophic parameters leading to the devastation of our health system may be relatively less disconcerting than a nerve gas assault.  But the danger is more immediately real.  The government that can’t even hire people to pretend to work green jobs properly thinks it can accurately predict Obamacare’s cost.  They determined that federalization will save us bundles by once again firing up Lyndon Johnson’s old Ouija board, disregarding how it wasn’t quite accurate about predicting Medicare’s cost (h/t Bob Schaffer).

Perhaps there was a reason vast-government lovers were completely, totally, utterly wrong about the cost of Washington’s initial entrance into the health care fray.  It could be that the primitive research capabilities available during the mid-60s prevented accurate predictions.  For example, consider how the perpetrators of the first Earth Day were building bonfires and donning pelts in anticipation of an inevitable Ice Age provoked by naughty industrious behavior.

They kind of abandoned the global cooling sales pitch.  Today, we’re of course much smarter and better-informed, which is why we can of course safely proclaim global warming’s existence as indisputable fact.  Oh, wait: they fudged all that, didn’t they?  The alleged lunkheads who remained skeptical that human progress would ruin Gaia by provoking temperature change in either direction look rather judicious today.

The disdain global warming warriors aimed at dissenters speaks to a greater contempt for something the left allegedly reveres, namely science.  Obama and Company act as if effective government intervention simply requires conducting the right experiment to get the desired conclusions.

But even those who gave up actively pursuing science the moment the physics Regents exam finished should know that it is a process, not a means of obtaining lock-safe denouements.  The objective method is about seeing what happens, not doing tests until what you want happens.

For example, the result has been the same every time the government has tested the hypothesis that their interdiction will help the public while saving money; ignoring the consistently deleterious outcome doesn’t mean it’s not true.  Two and two-thirds more years of Obamamism will fail to change what we’ve observed over a century of central planning.

The intransigence of liberal ideals failing in actuality serves as bad news for those who are confident we can somehow control the deficit by raising taxes.  They persist on maintaining that Americans will gladly work as hard and for the same hours despite getting to keep less of their earnings.  Liberals forget how humans react when rates are reset, which may be why they think a VAT will accomplish what an even more punitive income tax won’t.

Similarly, the White House thinks an armada of light-sipping vehicles can come into existence via decree.  But wanting cars to run for hours on a Dixie cup-sized fill-up cannot magically wring more miles per gallon out of engines.  Of course, the feds ignored obvious safety and demand issues when they upped the MPG requirement, too, so at least they’re consistent about pursuing unwanted goals that won’t work.

Or, our contemporary rulers can act so repulsed by functioning smokestacks that they disregard their purpose and mandate that they be turned off frequently.  In all cases, the government is lecturing the private sector about efficiency, which is akin to the Black Eyed Peas calling another band untalented.  It’s also like trusting the financial crunching of an entity that’s presently running a 14-figure debt.

The inability to ameliorate the nation’s social ills through the exertion of federal power is as demonstrable as it is consistent.  Innovative products concocted by private-sector geniuses along with evolving social attitudes accomplish more than reams of meddlesome legislation and restrictions ever could.

Further, it doesn’t matter how long politicians try to change Washington’s incontrovertibly lousy reputation, as they’ll fail even if given decades to try.  For example, Joe Biden has spent virtually his entire adult life in government, and he’s still not very good at his job.  Objectionable representatives David Obey and Charles Rangel were both first elected during Nixon’s first term; meanwhile, Carl Levin been in the Senate for too long, or since 1979 to be precise.

As with most of their colleagues, none of them have displayed a propensity for doing it right over time.  So, why would a man like Obama, who won his first election (to the Illinois Senate) on the same night Mr. Clinton was voted to his second presidential term, know enough about running a government be better at it than anyone before him?  The only thing paltrier than his political vision is his familiarity.

Those who ignore the persistency of tendencies are placing a sucker’s bet that that comes out in the house’s favor every single time.  But Obama truly thinks that he can provoke an exception to experience, chiefly because he personally makes a difference.  Unfortunately, an enthralling speaker who can attract followers as long as he sticks to bland platitudes won’t be able to alter the woeful ineffectiveness of federal intrusion, as we’re seeing.

I don’t have to repeat what happens to those who ignore history, although overlooking the ensuing results has often been acknowledged to cause insanity.  Sadly, Obama is too important to pay attention to repeatedly proven trends.  He ultimately thinks he’s better at implementing success from Washington than anyone else ever despite both the entirety of the nation’s past and his pitiable track record after 15 months in office.

But cheer up: the slickest of charmers is proving that he can’t make it work.  Accordingly, more people should be convinced to surrender hoping that those in Washington deserve one more chance to prove they won’t muck up everything.  Unlike everyone, Obama included, who holds that Obama will finally beget proficient government, most voters only get hoodwinked once.

Anthony Bialy is a freelance writer and “Red Eye” Conservative in Western New York.  He blogs at http://thebuffalobean.com and tweets at http://twitter.com/AnthonyBialy.

Of course, most of the 70-minute harangue was masochistically dedicated to whining about either why the public just doesn’t get their misunderstood genius-in-chief or how he’s been forced to clean up after George W. Bush created all the world’s evil.  Oddities such as anti-earmark stand were stirred among his usual bland optimism about the benefits of a limitlessly expanding federal behemoth that’s currently running a 14-figure debt.  His miniature spending cut serves as the equivalent of an alcoholic vowing to no longer buy vermouth.

The wholly insincere attempt to get deficit hawks and ticked-off moderates to accept him with a slight bit of small-government blather was transparently pathetic.  He spent even less time working to placate Tea Partiers than he did on national security, if that’s possible, which signifies how unwilling he is to budge from his socialist-leaning social democratic worldview. 

He’s dooming himself by not following the tack of the last Democratic administration.  Obama may be enough of an incurable narcissist to think that his venerable presence can single-handedly procure a victory for widely-despised progressive beliefs.  But the delusional golden child has, as usual, framed things precisely backward: having Bill Clinton in 1994 actually gave Democrats a greater advantage than Obama provides today.  Pursuing leftist policies ultimately results in lost elections either way.  But Clinton won in 1996 because he was a shifty cad who was willing to betray his principles.

The different styles aren’t based upon fundamental ideological disparity: the thoroughly liberal Clinton basically shares Obama’s beliefs.  The difference is that the second president to be impeached would sell his grandparents’ souls if it meant gaining votes.  His calculating pragmatism always trumped his leftist tendencies, which is why he had to both check that day’s polls and listen to a Dick Morris lecture before he could tell you where he stood.  On the other hand, the incumbent is steadfast about what he believes, which is proof that the courage of maintaining one’s convictions isn’t necessarily a point of pride.

Obama can’t even negotiate correctly.  He’s only willing to suggest compromise as a first step toward getting his hyper-liberal ideals put into practice.  Most obviously, he only dropped the public option from health proposals as a means of eventually slinking us toward single-payer anguish.  He reasoned that, once we realized how wonderful it was to be hooked on federal meddling, we’d be begging for IRS-style health insurance.  Based on the state of the Democrats’ sundry proposals, we can go ahead and gleefully announce that he miscalculated.  Still, importing Canadacare remains the only instance where he’d favor free trade.

On the other hand, Clinton gave in to his opponents as a means of retaining power.  He notoriously abandoned his beliefs when faced with a similar situation to the Yes We Can Man.  Namely, Clinton gave up on his wife’s health care socializing scheme.  In lieu of remaining loyal to Hillary for the first time in their marriage, he chose an entirely different course and signed the Republican-backed welfare reform.  As a result, he actually did something that benefited the nation, not to mention that he subsequently got to be president until early 2001.

Obama won’t do the same, as he’s too much of a partisan to accept that his approaches are unpopular for a reason.  Nobody should be shocked by the failure of professed liberal presidents to create a benevolent government that generates both full employment and international goodwill.  But a small cluster of followers keeps falling for both the dreadfully counterproductive domestic policies and Hallmark-style sentimental approach to international relations.  As with disillusioned Clinton supporters, the most baffling thing about Obama’s deflated cheerleaders remains how they fell for the cheap optimism in the first place.

The counterfeit magic no longer fools anyone.  He’s alienating more former cult members everyday.  Meanwhile, critics don’t even bother with Obamessiah jokes anymore; there’s no need to, as the HOPE picture has officially become ironic.  His stubbornly liberal nature means he’s trapped, too: Obama won’t trick conservatives or right-leaning independents into turning and backing him.  Meanwhile, the left is going to level their most tired accusation at him, namely that he’s a sellout because he wants to cut a couple of bucks out of an unfathomable budget.  He was much more effective at uniting people when all he had to do was yap in a generically inspiring manner.

Obama’s meek attempt to promote hawkish budgetary ideas comes across like retooling a sitcom.  Roseanne, Dan, and everyone else can call the new girl “Becky” all they want, but we all know it’s not really the eldest daughter.  Similarly, the imperceptible cuts feel like an utterly phony ploy even by State of the Union standards.

The Secretary of State’s husband shifted eagerly along with public opinion.  By contrast, Obama only does so reluctantly, and with the aforementioned pretend concessions.  He’s obviously not interested in trying hard: triangulation doesn’t work if one is staking out a position midway between the David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel wings.

That unwillingness to discard big-government nonsense should lead to another difference between him and Clinton, namely the number of terms each serves.  Obama has famously announced he’s fine with returning to his sheltered version of private sector life after four years if it means being a good president as opposed to being mediocre for eight years.  Every conservative wag has pointed out that he’ll likely be the worst of both worlds as a one-term mediocrity.  His blind allegiance to policies that don’t work and are nearly universally disliked means the damage he inflicts will at least be contained to one Olympiad.

Unfortunately for both his prospects and the nation, Obama is enough of a leftist zealot that he’s unlikely to modify his goals or relinquish an inch of territory in the meantime.  As a result, fellow Democrats are retreating as the moderates sprint to join the other side.  He must be getting lonely, although it’s entirely his fault for scaring away most potential cohorts.

He should glean a lesson from the last Democratic president and realize the lone strategy for liberals who want to stay in office revolves around discarding liberalism.  Only Obama could govern so feebly as to make Bill Clinton looks sensible by comparison.

Anthony Bialy is a freelance writer and “Red Eye” Conservative in Western New York.  He blogs at http://thebuffalobean.com and tweets at http://twitter.com/AnthonyBialy.

What’s the difference between 2010 and 1994? According to Obama, it’s him! Unlike 1994, his presence was going to prevent the Democrats from losing their chokehold on Congress. This was the pre-Senator Scott Brown Obama, brash and confident. Has the Massachusetts election shock caused a shift in Obama’s thinking?

In 1994, when the Democrats lost control of the House and Senate, President Bill Clinton reassessed his agenda. He acknowledged the failure of his healthcare plan and started moving back to the center. He became a moderate that reached across the aisle and made some concessions to the Republicans, most notably with welfare reform.

Is Barack Obama ready to take the road Bill Clinton took and finally slow his Progressive agenda? The White House is sending mixed messages. Continue to focus on healthcare? Start to focus on jobs? Decide that now is the time to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy to attempt to placate the left who are mad about Guantanamo and Afghanistan? Tell everyone that you’ll continue fighting for the middle class? When did you start, Mr. President?

Obama himself doesn’t seem to know where to go next. His presidency is adrift and the promises keep coming fast and furious without the fortitude to follow through with many of them. How much longer can the President get by on hope and change?

The “Racist” name calling is escalating. The left has no other way to change the conversation other than by sinking to sewer politics and racial divides by calling us racists. I have had many discussions with liberals who ask me to deny that opposition to Obama is rooted in racism. Of course, I’ll admit that there are some people who are racist who are opposing Obama’s policies, but the vast majority are people who are just against far left liberalism and have always been against it….regardless of who the perpetrator is, or what color they are.

What can liberals call us when we vocally oppose people like Harry Waxman, Carl Levin, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, et al, and even JOHN MC CAIN ? Are we racists when we vocally oppose them too? No, they just call us crazy right wing mobsters when we oppose liberal Whites. This is the proof that our opposition to Obama has to do with POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, and not race. I would venture to say that we are the same people who spoke out against Bill Clinton for eight years too. So now that we are opposing our President, who just happens to be Black, and a far left-wing ideologue, the left is using the race card to diminish us. They are using Barack Obama’s race to discredit us. It is a stupid analogy and we must continue to refute it at every opportunity. We must not let them reduce our political opposition to the President as racist based opposition.

This is such a simple arguement to make, yet I don’t hear enough conservatives or media people pointing out this fact. If President Obama was a conservative, favoring small government, low spending, accountability, little waste, etc. we would be behind him 100 %. We don’t care what color he is, or what color any politician is as long as their political ideology matches ours. Yet the media and other liberals are going unchallenged in their race baiting commentary that is escalating exponentially as Obama’s poll numbers fall.

What did liberals call Eric Holder when he dismissed the Black Panthers voter intimidation charges? Was that racism? Was it racism when liberals demeaned Condy Rice for eight years, or when they continue to demean J.C. Watts, or Michael Steele, or Ward Connerly, or Thomas Sowell, or Clarence Thomas, or Larry Elder, or Bill Cosby, or any Black public figure who happens to be conservative? Was it racism when Bill and Hillary Clinton opposed Obama’s policies during the campaign? Oh wait, yes I think they called Bill Clinton a racist during the campaign, and Geraldine Ferraro too! And they called Juan Williams an Uncle Tom when he wrote his book about personal responsibility. Colin Powell was an Uncle Tom too when he supported Bush’s policies, but when he endorsed Obama for the Presidency he wasn’t an Uncle Tom anymore. So much for liberal intellectual honesty.

The sad fact is that President Obama and most of the liberals in this country of ours have not lived up to the dream of one of America’s greatest leaders…Martin Luther King. You would think that in 2009 someone from the left or right, anyone, could have risen to power with the same leadership and character of Martin Luther King. Yet it has never happened. Instead, we have had dividers like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Van Jones, most of Obama’s Cabinet, the entire Democratic leadership, and Obama himself, who diminishes his opposition, and says nothing to his followers who continue to call us racist.

We must not let them frame our political ideology as an ideology rooted in racism, and when they do this, we must do what Obama famously advised to his followers: ‘Talk to your neighbors and friends, challenge their statements, get in their faces, and speak out.’

It is easy to be sympathetic to these movements; the federal government has seemingly found itself a carte blanche for regulation within several choice (Necessary and Proper and Commerce) clauses of the Constitution, and hasn’t looked back (barring rare occasions) since McCullough v. Maryland in 1809.

From what does the federal government derive its power?  Why is it that an abstract, seemingly omnipotent entity can extract funds from states, remembering that these states were initially more like independent nations than subservient communes?

Thomas Jefferson would say that the federal government only posses the power that sovereign states explicitly allow it to have; anything further is unconstitutional.  Justice John Marshall would emphatically state that a supreme federal power is implicitly derived from the people of America, leaving the states largely impotent.   The difference would redefine the future of America.

As long as the mutinous states operate within the confines of our Constitution, these bills are ineffectual at best, and embarrassing at worst.  The arbiters of the United States Constitution reside within the Supreme Court, see Marbury v. Madison, 5.U.S. 137 (1803), and they have clearly held, devoid of ambiguity, that the federal government has implied powers to carry out anything necessary to achieve the successful execution of their explicit Constitutional powers.  As it happens, those implied rights, never enumerated within the Constitution, are the backbone of the federal regulation and supremacy that these states loathe.  Furthermore, state sovereignty has been soundly renounced in several Supreme Court cases (Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, Cohens v. Virginia, Gibbons v. Ogden, McCullough v. Maryland). Those that have a strong constitutional background know this, and see these attempts at liberty by the unhappy states as awkward and unsettling.  Attempting to reassert powers under the 10th Amendment, when they have been judicially (read: constitutionally) reallocated elsewhere for the past 200 years, is regrettably rather absurd.  These claims simply cannot work within the current confines and interpretations of our Constitution.

Instead, the states have but two real options:  (1) change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 10th Amendment and implied federal rights, or (2) secede and free themselves from the constraints of the Constitution and the Court that interprets it.   Changing a constitutional interpretation at this point would require changing the ideological mood of the Supreme Court, most likely by restructuring the judiciary or replacing individual justices.  Secession is rife with its own issues that make it an unrealistic option.

It is perhaps a cruel irony that it is actually court packing itself that created the current pro-federal situation.  As most know, not everyone believed in having a strong centralized government as it stands today.  Jefferson, Mason, and Madison, only to name a few, were ardent state rights supporters who eschewed the idea of a supreme federal government.  It was John Adam’s last act as president, and the basis for Marbury vs. Madison, that allowed the underpinnings of America to significantly change toward the latter.  Shortly before Jefferson took office, Adams appointed quite a few new federalist judges, who would subsequently favor nationalistic policy.  Could this happen today, but with the opposite result, moving power back to the states?

The prospect is highly unlikely.  Court packing is an immensely difficult maneuver; it worked effectively in the early 1800’s because the republic was still largely undefined and with little structural precedent.  Checks and balances (mostly due to a lacking judiciary) hadn’t been effectively implemented and the battle of federalist vs. Jeffersonian ideology hadn’t been resolved.  Today, it is not so simple to change the number of Supreme Court justices, or getting one with radical views appointed for that matter.  Roosevelt ran into fatal issues with his Judiciary Reorganization Bill in 1937, when he tried to pack the courts with pro-New Deal justices.  It seems highly unlikely that a contemporary bill would experience any modicum of success.

For the recalcitrant states, that leaves secession.  The Constitution itself is remarkably silent on the issue of secession, but the Supreme Court is not.  Ironically, the federal government, represented by the Court, has actually ruled that states cannot lawfully leave the Union. See Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869).  Furthermore, any miscellaneous clause that a state has within their constitution reserving the right to secede is null.  In fact, the Court goes on to state that the only way to secede is through revolution or through “consent of the States”.  In other words, there is no such thing as a peaceable “thanks for the good times, but I’d rather be independent” departure, unless every other state agrees with the secession.

The practical issues involved with secession are immense.  First, every state receives massive federal funding; as much as states moan about regulation, they are fond of and rely on the money.  Interior states, for example, would be hard pressed to operate independently – the federal government subsidizes the farming industry to ensure economic sustainability.  Secondly, it is unlikely that the remaining states would allow a rebellious state to leave.  Less states means less taxes collected, which means less money for everyone else.  Finally, I find it unlikely that even Texas, our most likely contender, would start an armed revolution against the United States.

Depressingly, aggrieved states don’t seem to have an immediately practical recourse.  In addition to secession and court packing, some argue it is also possible to “pack” the legislature and executive with limited government sympathizers, as they are the ones who execute these judicially “discovered” implied federal powers. It is doubtful, however, that conservatives have anywhere near the political capital to attempt such a thing.  The fact of the matter is that while government taxation, spending, and regulation have run out of control, states actually have very little say in the matter.  Any illusions of state sovereignty are just that, illusions.

The Rationalist is a graduate of The United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, where he majored in Information Systems Technology and Economics. He is currently studying law at George Washington University. He invites you to follow him on Twitter (@the_rationalist).

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By Anthony Bialy

Obama’s good for something- 2.5 percent of the time

Tracking Barack Obama’s screw-ups may become one of the few full-time non-federal jobs he ever creates. It may not pay well, but what occupation does anymore? In fact, someone has already taken on the chore of tracking the president’s endless mistakes: A Smart Girl Politics user named Dawn re-posted an outstanding list (http://smartgirlpolitics.ning.com/profiles/blogs/what-obama-has-done-in-the) of 115 screw-ups he’s managed during these woeful first six months.

Impressed by the comprehensive register, I took a stab at the opposite challenge: since someone is already keeping up with Obama’s ample errors, I set out to compile a list of his positive developments over half a year.

I thought of three. Finding a few good things was as tricky as keeping up with his many bad things; I would have preferred to spend the time working as a public relations flack for Barbara Boxer or reading the health care bill. Still, here are some extremely rare cases where Obama earned our praise:

1) Teaching pirates a severe lesson- Number 105 on the Barack’s Been Bad list recalls how he “Salutes as heroes three Navy Seals who took down 3 terrorists who threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush admin. will likely stand trial for torturing a terrorist who had played a part in killing 3000 Americans, by pouring water up their nose….”

The latter half was clearly appalling of Obama. But he must get credit for the first part: he did allow SEALs to do their job. In place of trying to engage in U.S.-pirate dialogue or inviting them to an Independence Day barbeque, Obama unleashed our greatest warriors upon the scallywags.

Of course, the true heroes in the story remain our nation’s elite sailors. In flawlessly carrying out the perilous mission, they proved something we already knew: SEALs are badder dudes than even ninjas. But they were allowed to be ruthlessly efficient with the permission of the Commander-In-Chief.

2) Staying on the terror war’s course, kind of- Troops are still in Iraq, and Guantanamo remains open. Of course, those aren’t pleasant realities in an ideal world. But, the president has tacitly admitted that the last officeholder made reasonable decisions under the circumstances on a rather flawed planet named Earth. Some feared that all captured terrorists as well as most of our Iraq-based military personnel would be on American soil hours after the inauguration, but it hasn’t happened. Yet.

Obama knows he can get away with being an economic socialist: at worst, we all end up poor. But he at least occasionally seems to comprehend that lurching too far leftward on security would lead to innocent deaths. In that regard, he’s been willing to betray a handful of his ideals and maintain at least some of Bush’s safety policies. That’s true even if he teases his zealous supporters with hopes that he’ll appease their demands.

We’ll be holding our breath concerning Iraq for awhile, the Afghanistan situation has turned precarious, and Gitmo’s worst inmates could still end up residing in your ZIP code. But there’s hope that Obama might happily remain a hypocrite, telling his supporters one thing about fighting terror while actually sometimes doing the right thing instead.

3) Telling Africa to quit pointing fingers- Obama could have entirely blamed evil colonial imperialists for all of Africa’s troubles during his stopover on the continent. While he did a little anti-colonial ranting, he mostly talked toughly.

Quotes such as “We must start with a simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans” and “The West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants” could have been from a Heritage Foundation policy paper. But Obama surprisingly and thankfully uttered them in Ghana. Now, we could be really proud if he could only tell the country he actually leads that it’s up to us citizens to fix problems; I suppose we’ll take what we can get.

So, those are three sprouts in the dirt pile. Importantly, there’s a common thread in all these rare cases: Obama behaved like a conservative in each. Neither his tepid willingness to let the military do its job or his notions of self-reliance would have ever been expected from him. Each positive is refreshing precisely because he was acting against type.

Unfortunately, moments like these will remain exceptions. Mostly, he’ll continue to stomp upon free markets while refusing to spend money on one of the government’s few useful functions, namely our collective defense. He’s not willing to tell Kim Jong-Il to sod off or stand up for Iranians who are trying to rid themselves of a regime that happens to despise us and actively promote terror, but he did defend Honduras’s Chavez-backed president when he patently defied his country’s laws.

Such bizarre patterns have been the norm during Obama’s term. But he’s actually also serving a purpose with his fiascos. It leads to a rather indirect fourth accomplishment, namely that Obama is scuttling liberalism by being such a liberal.

He’s showing what happens when a true lefty is driving, namely double-digit unemployment along with massive deficits and looming tax hikes while nation-ruling scoundrels provoke us without fear. Unchecked collectivism paired with an impotent foreign policy will create a new generation of conservatives repulsed by the horrid outcomes. Obama will not merely see his policies rolled back: he’s unwittingly swinging the polls toward support of sensibly limited government that’s activist only when it comes to our protection.

There is obvious precedent for such upheaval in the right’s favor. Jimmy Carter created circumstances so perfectly miserable that he may as well have been on Ronald Reagan’s payroll. Next, Bill Clinton’s attempt to enact his wife’s socialized medicine scheme led to the 1994 Republican congressional takeover; later, fatigue over his nonsense got George W. Bush elected. Bush the Younger’s administration is remembered mostly fondly by conservatives even though he often approved federal expenditures at the same rate I would spend cash at a Labatt wholesaler.

But the best example comes from abroad. Namely, Margaret Thatcher’s revolution came in response to a Labour-led morass; she not only stopped Britain’s rot but also brought back its magnificence. Hmmm, can anyone think of a presently-emerging strong female conservative who could clean up after liberals as part of restoring our nation’s principles and prestige?

Obama is setting up a Sarah Palin-led conservative renaissance that will begin at his term’s midpoint congressional elections and be fully completed in 2012; that will stand as his greatest achievement. Remember to send him a thank-you note, even if it’s not something for which he’d like to receive gratitude.

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Ronald Wilson Reagan

by jklare

I know a lot of you who follow me on Twitter and are friends from Myspace are younger than me. So chances are you only know the man I’m going to write about from what your parents have told you or from what you saw of his old speeches.

Ronald Reagan took office on January 20, 1981, inheriting a worse economy than we have now, with higher unemployment, higher interest rates, and much higher inflation.

When he left office eight years later the economy was thriving, we were again respected worldwide for strength and diplomacy, assisted in the fall of the Soviet Empire, and most important of all, we were again proud to call ourselves Americans. He was the last President to leave office without leaving soaring national debt. 

It’s hard for me to accept it’s been over 20 years since we had a decent President. Don’t believe me? Let’s recap: George H. W. Bush followed Reagan. He was and is a good man, but more suited to running a private company than being President. Getting 38% in your re-election bid is not a vote of confidence.

Bill Clinton was and is a charismatic guy, but the fact remains that he balanced the budget on the backs of our troops by slashing the defense budget, and was “busy” with other things while Osama Bin Laden had free reign to plot our destruction. And it’s enough to say about George W. Bush that he is the man most responsible for the election of the man who now sits in the Oval Office. Thanks bunches Dubya. Heckava job.

Now as I watch a man with no experience and no qualifications stumble and gaffe when he’s not taking over private businesses, I have to wonder- is this it?  Is this the best we can do? 

They called Reagan “the movie actor”, insinuating lack of true intelligence, but watch any speech he ever gave or read anything he ever wrote. His wisdom and intelligence guided us through very tough times, domestically and internationally.  They said he would trigger World War III, but he was the man most responsible for destroying the Soviet Empire peacefully.

They said he was too old to be President, but he proved that experience and wisdom ARE necessary to be the most powerful man in the world and be effective. He was a true conservative, he championed smaller government, lower taxes, less spending, a strong military, individual liberty, and freedom for every man, woman, and child on earth.

Tyranny was his enemy, as it is the enemy of all great men. We miss Ronald Wilson Reagan now more than ever.

Who will save us this time?