There's a small swirlig meme circling the blogosphere that started several months ago with the erection of a billboard up in Minn or Wisc - a picture of a smiling GWB with the caption "Miss Me Yet?".  Now comes word from Martha's Vinyard no less that similar shirts are outselling "I vacationed with Obama" shirts.  To many of the reason is clear.  But Elizabeth Scalia recently put into words what many on the left and center are thinking.

"One of my husband’s friends–hated Bush, loved Obama and defended him vociferously for the first year, less passionately the second–told him over lunch this week that he’s done with Obama and “I never thought I’d say this but I miss Bush. We knew that he said what he meant, even if we didn’t want to hear it. We knew who he was, even if we didn’t like him. And we never had to wonder whether he liked us. He always did.”

And that is it, in a nutshell. Bush is missable, because we miss having a president whose affection for his country and its people–even the ones who hated him–was never in doubt.

We miss Bush because he never lectured us or harangued us, and when people disagreed with him, they were not immediately called names in an attempt to simply shut up debate."

there's a little more here

Imagine that there really were these fundamentalist Christian terror cells all over the United States, as the Department of Homeland Security imagines. Let's say a group of five of these terrorists hijacked a plane, flew it to Mecca, and plowed it into the Kaaba.

Now let's say a group of well-meaning, well-funded Christians -- Christians whose full-time job was missionary work -- decided that the best way to promote healing would be to pressure the Saudi government to drop its prohibition against permitting non-Muslims into Mecca so that these well-meaning, well-funded Christian missionaries could build a $100 million dollar church and community center a stone's throw from where the Kaaba used to be -- you know, as a bridge-building gesture of interfaith understanding.

What do you suppose President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, the New York Times, and other Ground Zero mosque proponents would say about the insensitive, provocative nature of the proposal?

Do you think the State Department would make the leader of the Christian missionaries a special emissary and send him to represent the United States on diplomatic business overseas?

What do you suppose the Saudi reaction would be?

What do you suppose those ecumenical GZ mosque proponents at Hamas would say?

What do you suppose Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders would say?

In Foreign Policy,Charles  Kenny lists a whole bunch of positive developments that we should pause to savor:

For all its problems, the first 10 years of the 21st century were in fact humanity's finest, a time when more people lived better, longer, more peaceful, and more prosperous lives than ever before.

Consider that in 1990, roughly half the global population lived on less than $1 a day; by 2007, the proportion had shrunk to 28 percent -- and it will be lower still by the close of 2010. That's because, though the financial crisis briefly stalled progress on income growth, it was just a hiccup in the decade's relentless GDP climb. Indeed, average worldwide incomes are at their highest levels ever, at roughly $10,600 a year -- and have risen by as much as a quarter since 2000. Some 1.3 billion people now live on more than $10 a day, suggesting the continued expansion of the global middle class. Even better news is that growth has been faster in poor places like sub-Saharan Africa than across the world as a whole.

There are still 1 billion people who go to bed each night desperately hungry, but cereal prices are now a fraction of what they were in the 1960s and 1970s ...  Agricultural productivity, too, continues to climb: From 2000 to 2008, cereal yields increased at nearly twice the rate of population growth in the developing world. And though famine continues to threaten places such as Zimbabwe, hundreds of millions of people are eating more -- and better -- each day....

The overwhelming global picture is of better health: From 2000 to 2008, child mortality dropped more than 17 percent, and the average person added another two years to his or her life expectancy, now just one shy of the biblical standard of three score and 10. We can thank improved literacy, which has played a role in spreading vital knowledge in low-income societies, for some of these health gains. More than four-fifths of the world's population can now read and write -- including more than two-thirds of Africans. The proportion of the world's young people who go on to university climbed from below one-fifth to above a quarter from 2000 to 2007 alone. And progress in education has been particularly rapid for women, one sign of growing gender equity....

Even the wars of the last 10 years, tragic as they have been, are minor compared with the violence and destruction of decades and centuries past. The number of armed conflicts -- and their death toll -- has continued to fall since the end of the Cold War. Worldwide, combat casualties fell 40 percent from 2000 to 2008.

Kenny does acknowledge some ongoing environmental problems and notes that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is still spreading. So given all the positives listed by Kenny, why do so many people have the impression that the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket? Kenny suggests:

Perhaps technology also helps account for the striking disconnect between the reality of worldwide progress and the perception of global decline. We're more able than ever to witness the tragedy of millions of our fellow humans on television or online. And, rightly so, we're more outraged than ever that suffering continues in a world of such technological wonder and economic plenty.

In the end, I agree with his rousing conclusion:

Nonetheless, if you had to choose a decade in history in which to be alive, the first of the 21st century would undoubtedly be it. More people lived lives of greater freedom, security, longevity, and wealth than ever before.

Go cheer yourself up for a moment and read the whole Foreign Policy article here. Then get back to damning the corrupt and clueless politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, Sacramento, Richmond, Helena, and ....

The President has been adding to his "economy as a car" analogy in his stump speech.  Originally is was shor and sweet ... ""And yet, after driving our economy into the ditch, they decided to stand on the side of the road and watch us while we pulled it out of the ditch," Obama said at the Los Angeles event for Sen. Barbara Boxer of California. "They asked, ‘Why haven't you pulled it out fast enough?' ‘I noticed there's, like, a little scratch there in the fender. Why didn't you do something about that?'"

Has added the Donks drinking a slurpee and a few other images NONE of which really enhance the reality of the analogy.  

Enter Ricky Sprague. 

The more responsible people who aren't necessarily affiliated with either of the "major" political parties say things like, "You guys better get the insurance, and don't drive too fast, and take off that blindfold when you're driving." So the democrats and republicans beat those people with a crowbar, and throw them in the trunk of the car.

Then they take turns driving.

They drive the car wherever they feel like it. Open roads. Back roads. Highways. They drive the wrong way down one-way streets. They make left turns on red. When they bother to stop at stoplights, they pull all the way out into the cross walk, so that when you're out running you have to run all the way out into oncoming traffic to get around the front of their car....When the gas gauge indicates "E," if they notice it at all, they laugh and say, "This car's got another good 10,000 miles in it, easy!"

Then they all get drunk for awhile....

Oh, just read the whole thing. 

Now that Nancy Pelosi's ordering investigations into Victory Mosque opponents (including Mr. Reid and Dr.  Dean) I thought I'd help her out by fwdng thesenotable quotes from Silicon Grafitti ...

The Top Ten Harry Reid quotes!

Number 10: Get this man a Claritin!

Number 9: The Peasants are Revolting!

Number 8, Beware the Evil-mongers!

Number 7: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

Number 6: The Senator as psychiatrist.

Number 5: Newspaper jobs saved or created!

Number 4: Harry Supports the Troops.

Number 3: Beltway Babies Say Goodnight.

Number 2: When Harry met Barry.

And after that racial epithet, Harry doubles down! Which brings us to The Number one quote from the Harry Reid super gaffe-o-matic 76 machine: Harry stands up for diversity and freedom of choice:

“I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican. Do I need to say more?”

No Harry, you’ve said enough. Which is why it might be time to take a nice long vacation come November.

What say you, Nevada?

probably not ... but here's a VERY good take down of all the N-word nonesense still floating about

And James Taranto does a pretty good job here

There's the whole suspicious timing issue as well.

(with a hat tip to Jeff Goldblum and the folks at the Soady Deer Camp)

the following is pulled from Reason

Back in January, President Barack Obama told us all (including the future starving generations of poor kids whose food stamps are being sacrificed so teachers today can get paid by federal bailouts), that

Everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good. Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game.

And back when Obama was trying to get the Olympics to Chicago, he was flanked by Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama, who talked about that trip as a sacrifice:

"As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the President to come for these few days, so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home."

Lady O's latest sacrifice?

The First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her "closest friends." According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.

Reports are calling the lodgings of  Obama's Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, "luxurious," "posh" and "a millionaires' playground." Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two.

As New York Daily News columnist Andrea Tantaros (from whom the preceding quotes are taken) observes:

To be clear, what the Obamas do with their money is one thing; what they do with ours is another. Transporting and housing the estimated 70 Secret Service agents who will flank the material girl will cost the taxpayers a pretty penny.

You said it, sister.