Michael Ramirez that is, the political cartoonist for Investors Business Daily:

Basically, all of Obama's words are so much sweet-smelling bull$hit. He wants your money. He promises to give back some of it. There are people who think that is a good deal.

Reuters:

Exhausted Australian doctors have been told to drink up to six cups of coffee a day to stay awake during extended shifts, building pressure on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to seize control of state-run hospitals.

A document on fatigue management released by health officials in Queensland state recommended doctors ingest 400 milligrams of caffeine to stay awake on the job, or the equivalent of six cups of coffee, after warnings that patients were dying.

Yeah, just what you want. A surgeon with the jitters from too much caffeine.

OOPS!

Sometimes, the news inadvertently reports itself. Adjacent stories in my RSS feed this morning:

US comes in 2nd in competitiveness poll (we had been first>

Dollar hits low for year as gold breaches $1,000

"Sluggish" hiring outlook

Stocks open higher amid optimism over recovery

These, taken together, to me still indicates that it's a "sucker's rally."

Dave at Classical Values points out that health care might not be Obama's "Waterloo," but instead a Pyrric victory--as everybody knows that something will be passed and called "health care reform":

People keep talking about health care reform being Obama's Waterloo. It's not. It's his Heraclea, his Asculum, a potential Pyrrhic victory that might destroy his party. Americans are generally happy with their healthcare, and abhor gov't rationing and government mandates in a way Europeans and Japanese don't. Our cultural identity is built around individualism and liberty. That's why "reform" gets less popular they more people hear about specific proposals.

Captain Obvious is apparently now working as a psychology researcher in the Netherlands.

In the telegraph.co.uk: Men lose their minds speaking to pretty women

Reason Hit & Run:

Inspectors working for the Stoke City Council in England have warned residents to remove welcome mats and potted plants from their porches. Officials say people could trip over the items.

The White House has released an advanced copy. They would have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had a) released the advanced text earlier and b) not issued "study guides" to accompany it. The study guides were what redlined the concern over the possible politicization of the speech for purposed of proselytizing the kiddies.

Of course, we don't know what the speech looked like before the right side of the country hit the panic button.

But one takeaway Obama should take away from this, but probably won't, is that a very, very large segment of the American public does not trust him.

Trust is not given. It's earned. For those "leave me alone" type people like me, he has done nothing to earn my trust, and he's done a lot to make me mistrust him mightily.

For the sake of this country, I hope he figures things out soon. But I am not hopeful.

Released text of the speech after the "read more."

That's Mechelle Voepel, and Kay Yow.

Go. Read.

Barack Obama and the Democrat leadership seem hell-bent on reinforcing and extending the very government policies that made the Great Depression worse, prolonging it by seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

An increasing number of economists are warning of going down the old, tired, destructive, dangerous statist road that has lead us to this crisis in the first place. The latest are Charles K. Rowley and Nathanael Smith, who have published a a monograph titled Economic Contractions in the United States: A Failure of Government.

The monograph has been endorsed by Nobel Economics Prize winner James Buchanan, who is quoted in the UK's Telegraph newspaper:

"We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s' Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work."

How's that stimulus working out for you?

Mark Steyn:

Speaking of The New York Times, Jonah, in my weekend column I noted my rare appearance in its august pages (well, okay, September pages):

Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.

Tim Blair, the great Australian wag, has a round-up of those hardworking types at other publications whose concept of journalism begins and ends with seeing what's in The New York Times and passing it on. Tim missed a few, like The Sacramento Bee:

On Wednesday, Canadian-born writer Mark Steyn said on Rush Limbaugh's nationally broadcast radio show that Obama's ambitions to create a "cult of personality" were similar to those of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il or former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

And The Las Vegas Sun:

The New York Times quoted Mark Steyn, filling in for conservative radio demagogue Rush Limbaugh, as saying Obama was trying to create a cult of personality like Saddam Hussein or North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.

"Quoted", eh? Actually, if you read the Times piece - by two reporters, no less - the striking feature is that there's no direct quote, is there? Not to worry. It's even been picked up overseas. Lara Marlowe in Ireland's newspaper of record, The Irish Times:

First prize for lunacy goes to Canadian commentator Mark Steyn, who accuses Obama of trying to establish a “personality cult” like Saddam Hussein or North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

And first prize for laziness goes to Irish commentator Lara Marlowe. For the record, here's the only thing I actually said about Kim and Saddam on Wednesday's Rush show:

Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the kind of Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. We have never been at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

If you believe the New York Times or any of its sycophants throughout the world's media about anything politics-related, then my friend you've been drinking too much Victory Gin.

Big Brother is watching you.