This has been one of the most momentous weeks in recent history.  It will be some while before we know whether the glass is more or less than half full. The biggest development is the resignation Friday of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and his transfer of power to a military council.  I’ve already written a great deal about Egypt this week, so I won’t say more now, except in reference to the boob of the week below. If Jack Wheeler were writing the HFR this week, his heroes of the week doubtless would be the House Republican freshmen, led by Jim Jordan of Ohio, who forced the leadership to expand the budget cuts they were planning.

To give the impression they’re on top of things, President Obama and his aides have spoken out frequently during the crisis in Egypt.  But the many shifts in their position are alienating both supporters of the regime and those who are protesting it.

“The official U.S. position is that (Egyptian President Hosni) Mubarak needs to go immediately, he needs to stay indefinitely, he needs to stay for a bit and then go, he needs to stay for a bit longer and then go sooner rather than later, unless he decides to stay until September,” summarized humorist Mark Steyn.

“The improvisational -- critics say closer to schizophrenic -- nature of U.S. diplomacy during the crisis leaves the administration in the unwelcome position of having to make amends with whichever side emerges from the Egyptian tumult as the governing power,” wrote Ben Smith in the Webzine Politico.  “The anti-Mubarak forces clearly will wonder whether the White House ever had their back -- but Mubarak and those close to him also will question whether Washington was ready to throw him over the side.”

Mr. Obama appears to have backed away from his demand that Mr. Mubarak resign “yesterday” because under the Egyptian constitution, he would be succeeded not by Vice President Omar Suleiman, the administration’s preference, but by the Speaker of the House, and that new presidential elections must be held within 60 days, a timetable that would give the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood a big advantage.

I don’t expect the president or his aides to have the details of the Egyptian constitution at their fingertips.  I do expect them to familiarize themselves with it before they pop off in public.

TTP Member, Ella forwarded this from Michael Pack (Archangel):   "My wife was just diagnosed with cancer.  We don't have all the tests done yet, but the doc feels very strongly about her prospects.  We have a 3 1/2 yr old boy, and a 4mo old daughter.

The bottom line is, we will take all the prayers we can get." Her name is Stacey Pack.

Let's take a minute to ask God's intercession for Stacey and her family.

We don’t know yet who will emerge as winners from the turmoil in the Middle East.  But it’s pretty clear who is the biggest loser.

“The White House has not looked weaker and more indecisive in decades,” said Sultan al Qassemi, a columnist for a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.

“Nobody’s listening to America anymore,” Rami Khouri, director of the Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut told the Washington Post.  “It’s become irrelevant.”

The decline of Western influence is a product of bad leadership, wrote Ari Shavat in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

“How can it be that Bush’s America understood the problem of repression in the Arab world, but Obama’s America ignored it until last week?” he asked.  “How can it be that in May, 2009, Hosni Mubarak was an esteemed president who Barack Obama respected, and in January 2011 Mubarak is a dictator whom even Obama is casting aside?”

So what’s that got to do with the price of wheat?

Quite a lot...if the topic is unrest in the Middle East.

The price of wheat has nearly doubled in the last year. Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat.  For Egyptians -- half of whom live on less than $2 a day -- that can be the difference between feeding your family and starving.

Egyptians have known only authoritarian governments.  But starvation can make political arrangements long tolerated seem intolerable.

President Barack Obama belatedly has concluded a lack of democracy is the source of instability in Egypt. 

He overstates enthusiasm for democracy.  The middle class in Egypt is very small.  There are more than three times as many illiterates as there are college graduates.

A Pew poll released Dec. 2 indicates few Egyptians share the outlook of the middle class.  Given a choice between “Islamists” and “modernizers,” 59 percent preferred the Islamists, only 27 percent the modernizers.

“A population that was convinced just two months ago that sharks in the Red Sea were implanted by the Israeli Intelligence Services is hardly at a stage of creating a liberal democracy in Egypt,” Egyptian student Sam Tadros said in an email to Clarice Feldman of the American Thinker.

On Jan. 21, the Environmental Protection Agency said a fuel blend of 85 percent gasoline and 15 percent ethanol could be used in all cars and light trucks manufactured between 2001 and 2006.  This expanded an EPA ruling in October which permitted the use of E15 in vehicles manufactured since 2007. The EPA issued this ruling despite the fact its own research indicates expanded production of ethanol will hurt the environment. In the United States, ethanol (ethyl alcohol) is made mostly from corn.  Its supporters say ethanol reduces our dependence on foreign oil, and makes the air cleaner.  But a 2005 study by Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University and Dr. Tad Patsek of the University of California-Berkeley indicated that it takes 29 percent more energy to produce a gallon of corn-ethanol than the ethanol itself contains. Since the energy required to produce ethanol comes chiefly from fossil fuels, ethanol increases, not reduces, our dependence on oil.  And, according to a study by Stanford University Prof. Mark Jacobson, it makes air pollution worse.

The Obama administration has all but shut down drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and has cancelled four oil lease sales in Alaska.  There were fewer new wells drilled for oil on public lands in 2010 than in any other year in the past decade. This is costing thousands of Americans their jobs, costing the Treasury hundreds of millions of dollars from lease fees and in tax revenues, and is driving the price of oil higher. Wind and solar power, the president's favorites, are enormously expensive.  According to the Energy Information Administration, the cheapest way to generate a kilowatt hour of electricity is by burning natural gas in a combined cycle unit.  Wind is 88% more expensive; solar 399% more expensive.  They can compete only when government mandates their use, or provides massive subsidies. You could call all of this examples of Mr. Obama's anti-energy energy policy.

A media darling one day, an unperson the next. Eric Fuller's moment in the spotlight was very short. The Associated Press did a story a week ago Friday (1/14) on the charge Mr. Fuller made on an obscure left-wing radio program (Democracy Now!) that conservatives were responsible for the shooting spree in Tucson that left six people dead and 14 others -- including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- injured.  It was a major topic of discussion on MSNBC that night. "It looks like (Sarah) Palin, (Glenn) Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target," Mr. Fuller said. Mr. Fuller made this charge days after it was clear the shooter, Jared Loughner, was mentally ill, didn't listen to talk radio, had a grudge against Rep. Giffords that predated Ms. Palin's arrival on the national scene, admired the Communist Manifesto, hated President Bush, and opposed the Iraq war.  A former classmate described Mr. Loughner as "a left-wing pothead." So why did some journalists play up a disproved charge made by someone you never heard of on a radio program few listen to?

No nation has placed greater emphasis on wind and solar energy than Spain.  On eight separate occasions early in his presidency, Barack Obama cited the "green" policies enacted by Spain's socialist government as the model for what he wants for America. President Obama doesn't talk so much about Spain anymore.  When Gabriel Calzada, an economist at a private think tank in Spain, issued a report which said each wind energy job the government created cost Spanish taxpayers $1.4 million in subsidies, and destroyed 2.2 jobs in the private sector, it prompted panic in Obama appointees in the Department of Energy, who worked with wind energy lobbyists to craft responses to the study. "What this shows is a shameless politicization of what should be a professional bureaucracy," said Investor's Business Daily in an editorial.  "Instead of staying objective, they sought to scupper facts for ideologically motivated junk science." I suppose it is natural for politicians to be attracted to wind power, since so many of them are blowhards.  But if you think wind energy could replace a substantial amount of the fossil fuels we use, you must have slept through physics class in high school.

On Saturday (1/08), Jared Lee Loughner, 22, opened fire in a Safeway in Tucson, killing six and wounding 14.  Among the dead was U.S. District Judge John Roll, a conservative Republican.  Among the seriously injured was Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a liberal Democrat. Long before anything was known about Mr. Loughner, journalists speculated about what really motivated his murder spree. For most in the news media, the arch villain was Sarah Palin, who before the election had marked on her Web site with the crosshairs of a rifle sight the districts of Democrats she thought could be defeated.  Among those complaining was liberal Web logger Markos Moulitsas, who on his Web site (Daily Kos) had put a bullseye of his own on Ms. Giffords just two days before (1/06) she was shot.  Mr.Moulitsas was upset Ms. Giffords had voted against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker the previous day. "In all my years as a working journalist, I've never seen such shallow, thoughtless, agenda-driven drivel as I have in the past 36 hours," said former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg Monday (1/10).

Most Moslems -- at least most of those who live in the West -- do not seek to impose their religion upon others by force.  But there are among them some who are eager to kill all who do not believe exactly as they believe. Rep. Peter King, R-NY, the new chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House, thinks it would be good for all of us to know which is which.  He said Dec. 19 he plans to hold hearings on "the radicalization of the American Moslem Community." In an editorial on New Year's Day, the New York Times described Rep. King's plan to hold hearings as a "sweeping slur on Moslem citizens." Zuhdi Jasser disagrees.  He's a physician in Arizona, a former naval officer, and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.  He thinks Rep. King's hearings will provide "an opportunity for Moslems who don't toe the line of American Islamist organizations to present an alternative vision for American Moslems -- one based in American values and Moslem reform."

The blizzard which crippled New York City last week brought at least momentary humility to its billionaire mayor, who could use some. "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg admitted on Wednesday (12/29) that his administration's response to the blizzard that buried New York this week had been inadequate, and he pledged to hold himself and others accountable as the city continued to work its way to normalcy," the New York Times reported. But I don't put much stock in his pledge "to hold himself and others accountable."  For in government these days, nothing succeeds like failure. That's because for those in government there are few consequences for failure, or even for deliberate sabotage.  Indeed, today, government agencies and bureaucrats are rewarded for failure, not penalized.  Here's why: Government grows despite repeated failures to serve the public well because government's purpose no longer is to serve the public.  Government now serves primarily the interests of those who work for the government. 

Despite the prejudices and frequent legal barriers against them, virtually everywhere where Jews have lived, they've been over-represented in science, medicine, business, and the arts.  Two-tenths of one percent of the world's people are Jewish.  Twenty-two percent of recipients of the Nobel Prize since 1901 have been Jewish. Jews are under-represented on welfare rolls and among violent criminals.  Compared to most other ethnic groups, they've been model citizens. The term "anti-Semitism" also makes no sense, because the people today who hate Jews most, the Arabs, also are Semites (children of Shem).  The term was coined by the 19th Century German journalist Wilhelm Marr, who wanted a more gussied-up name for his prejudice than Judenhass (Jew hate). Anti-Semitism is as popular now in tony left-wing circles in Europe and America as it was in right-wing circles in Germany in the 1930s. Tiny Israel, alone among the nations of the world, is condemned for having the temerity to defend herself. Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969-1974) was asked once how Israel has managed to prevail despite the huge numerical advantage of her foes. "There's the natural way and the miraculous way," she responded.  "The natural way is that God sends a miracle and we win.  And the miraculous way is that somehow we do it by ourselves."

There were no terrorist incidents over Christmas, for which we can all be thankful.  But you may suspect, as I do, that our good fortune was due more to luck than to government vigilance. Last week (12/20), Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Diane Sawyer on ABC News that under her guidance, "thousands of people are working 24/7, 364 days a year to keep the American people safe." 364? Just how hard are they working, rather than sexually groping, on those 364 days?  Random, covert tests of airport security run by federal agencies show a failure rate of 70% at some major airports. On Christmas Day, prosecutors in the Netherlands announced the arrest of 12 Moslems suspected of plotting terror.  Arrests of suspected terrorists in Germany, Spain and France, and the (thankfully premature) detonation of a suicide bomber in Sweden lend credence to reports al Qaeda is planning massive attacks this holiday season.  So let's hope the day a year Ms. Napolitano suggested her people aren't working at all isn't New Years Eve. 

The biggest consumer ripoff in America today is a college education.  The cost of attending college has increased by roughly four times the rate of inflation over the last decade, and has reached heights that place enormous strain on middle class families.  About 70 percent of high school graduates start college, but barely half earn a degree within the traditional four years.  And many who do get a degree only can find jobs for which college is not necessary.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 49.37 million college graduates who had jobs in 2008, 17.4 million were working in occupations requiring less than a bachelor's degree. For instance, 29.8 percent of flight attendants had college degrees.  So did 24.5 percent of retail salespeople, 17.4 percent of bellhops, 16.6 percent of secretaries,15.2 percent of taxi drivers, and 13.9 percent of mail carriers. The proportion of Americans who attend college has increased dramatically in the last 20 years.  But, according to Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, 60 percent of the increase since 1992 worked in low skill jobs, some of which don't even require a high school diploma. This is "the single most scandalous statistic in higher education," Dr. Vedder said.

When Tim Pawlenty became governor of Minnesota in 2003, the state faced a budget shortfall of more than $4 billion.  Mr. Pawlenty balanced the budget without raising taxes, despite fierce opposition from the Democrat-controlled legislature. This is comparable to what Mitch Daniels has accomplished in Indiana, better than what Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie have so far been able to do in Louisiana and New Jersey, respectively. On national issues, Gov. Pawlenty has taken solidly conservative, but frequently imaginative positions.  His political career and personal life have been scandal free. A candidate with more pizzazz who had a record like Mr. Pawlenty's would be prominent in the buzz about the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.  But Mr. Pawlenty is dull, deadly dishwater dull.  Yet Mr. Pawlenty's dullness is the reason why he should be given more consideration, thinks law professor William Jacobson.

It's been a tough week for Obamacare. On Monday (12/13), Rasmussen released a poll taken the week before which indicated 60 percent of likely voters favor repeal of President Barack Hussein Obama's signature "accomplishment."  Only 34 percent were opposed. The same day a federal district judge in Virginia ruled the key provision in Obamacare, which requires Americans to buy health insurance or pay a hefty fine (2.5 percent of annual income), is unconstitutional. Two other federal district judges, one in Michigan and another in Virginia, have ruled the individual mandate is constitutional. There are many more acts to come in this drama.  Judge Hudson issued his ruling in a lawsuit brought by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.  Today (12/16), a federal district judge in Florida heard arguments on a suit brought by 20 other state attorneys general.  The constitutionality of Obamacare likely will be debated in several courts of appeal before it makes its way to the Supreme Court in a year or so. The score so far is 2-1 in favor of constitutionality.  But Georgetown University Law Professor Randy Barnett thinks Judge Hudson's decision is a game-changer.

Last Friday (12/10) the most remarkable news conference of the Obama presidency took place.  Many who watched with slack-jawed amazement when the president abdicated the podium to former President Bill Clinton overlooked the irony of the pair endorsing as economic necessity extension of the Bush tax rates against which both have railed for lo these many years. His flip flop was a brilliant political move, said conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer.  "Barack Obama has won the great tax cut showdown of 2010," he declared.  Mr. Obama won, Mr. Krauthammer said, because the deal amounts to a second stimulus that will improve the economy enough to boost his prospects for re-election. But another conservative columnist, Dick Morris, said what the president had negotiated with Republicans "was surrender, pure and simple."  Mr. Obama "desperately wants to raise taxes on wealthy people, not for the revenue as much to redistribute income," Mr. Morris said.  "But he couldn't do it and gave in." Who's right?  Who surrendered to whom?

Remember 1992?  A first-term president, who started out with sky-high popularity then squandered it, was running against a governor from a hick state - and lost, thanks to billionaire Ross Perot's third party candidacy that split the GOP vote.  Will history obversely repeat itself 20 years later, with a billionaire's third party candidacy splitting the Dem vote and electing Sarah Palin? That's why the most interesting political development this week wasn't the deal President Obama struck with congressional Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts, or the bizarre news conference Mr. Obama held to defend it.  It was...

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It’s the elephant in the room.  But few besides W. Kurt Hauser seem to have noticed it.

Since World War II, federal tax revenues have only rarely, only barely, and only briefly exceeded 19 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), noted Mr. Hauser, chairman of an investment management firm in San Francisco and chairman emeritus of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in the Wall Street Journal Nov. 26.  (The average since 1950 has been a hair under 18 percent.)

This has been so when tax rates were high and when tax rates were low (during this period, the top marginal income tax rate has fluctuated between 28 percent and 92 percent); when the economy was strong and when the economy was weak.

How can this be?

It is, as Yogi Berra might say, déjà vu all over again on the Korean peninsula. On Tuesday, Nov. 23, North Korea fired artillery rockets at the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians, and wounding 18 others. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Monday (11/29) South Korea will "sternly retaliate" if there are any further provocations from the Norks.  The North Korean artillery attack was a "provocative" show of force that "needs to be dealt with," said US President Barack Hussein Obama. This song has been sung before.  On March 26, North Korea sank a South Korean frigate, killing 46.  President Lee promised "resolute" measures then.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attack on the frigate, and declared it would not go "unanswered." But it did go unanswered.

What's most important about the latest WikiLeaks dump of secret U.S. diplomatic cables isn't what's in the cables themselves. Most appalling is that an Army PFC with no need to know was able not only to access these documents, but to copy them without detection, and to dispatch them to WikiLeaks.  This was an egregious neglect of elementary security for which heads should roll.  There is no evidence that any heads have. This was the second WikiLeaks data dump.  The Justice Department took no action after the first WikiLeaks data dump in July.  But Attorney General Eric Holder is considering legal action this time. "Why is this round of leaks any different than previous leaks about the military?" asks Web logger Ed Morrissey (Hot Air).  "It seems that the release of the diplomatic cables, unlike the earlier releases which identified hundreds of informants in Afghanistan and exposed them to mortal danger, embarrasses Obama administration officials."

Right about now Attorney General Eric Holder should be planning his return to private practice, or someone in the White House should be planning it for him. Last week (11/17), a jury in Manhattan acquitted Ahmed Ghailani of all but one of 285 counts he was charged with for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people were killed. Terrorists such as Mr. Ghailani, who was born in Tanzania and was captured in Pakistan, have no business being tried in a U.S. courtroom, afforded the same constitutional protections as are U.S. citizens.  Yet Mr. Holder insists they be.  More serious than his interference in national security policy, however, are his apparent violations of the law.  Soon enough, without the protection of a Democrat Congress, Attorney General Holder may find himself being prosecuted.

After his humiliating Asian trip -- where foreign leaders at the G20 summit in Seoul treated him as if he had a social disease -- President Barack Hussein Obama is desperate for something that could be spun as a foreign policy "triumph." That's why he's pressing so hard to have the Senate ratify in the lame schmuck session the nuclear arms reduction treaty (New START ) he negotiated with Russia last Spring. This is a bad idea, for several resons, one of which is that he thinks it will further his fantasy of a nuclear free world.  A nuclear free United States would be a nightmare for us in a world in which China and Pakistan have the bomb, and North Korea, Iran and Venezuela(!) aggressively are pursuing it.  It's time for Mr. Obama to wake up from his dream and smell the radioactive coffee.

He's a soft spoken, mild mannered academic who means well (I think).  But he could be the most dangerous man in America. He is Ben Bernanke, formerly of Princeton, now chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and he is making most of us poorer.  The Fed has the power to manipulate the money supply, which is a dangerous power for government to have. "Government," said the economist Ludwig von Mises, "is the only agency which can take a useful commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it totally worthless." Mr. Bernanke's plans for "quantitative easing" (creating money out of thin air) won't make our dollars worthless.  But it will make them worth less -- about 20 percent less, thinks Bill Gross, manager of the world's largest mutual fund. There are other serious people who think that 20% inflation caused by our government's gargantuan creation of imaginary money is at least an order of magnitude too low.

The most important issue to be dealt with in the lame duck session of Congress is whether to extend the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire in January. If the Bush tax cuts expire, the current six income tax rates of 10 percent, 15 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent, 33 percent and 35 percent would be replaced by five rates of 15 percent, 28 percent, 31 percent, 36 percent and 39.6 percent. Letting all the tax rates cuts expire would strip at least a percentage point from an already anemic growth forecast for next year, predicts Goldman Sachs. Aside from the immediate economic consequences, the debate over the Bush tax cuts will indicate how willing President Barack Hussein Obama is to compromise with Republicans, who will take over the House of Representatives in January. It will also indicate how trustworthy Mr. Obama's word is at a time when Republicans feel they can trust him about as far as they can toss him across the Potomac River.

Will the next president of the United States be Joe Biden?  That's not the way to bet, of course.  But it isn't as unlikely as you might think. It remains to be seen whether what happened Nov. 2 will be an episode, as 1994 and 1946 turned out to be, or the beginning of a political realignment, as the 1930 midterm election was. Because they fear it might be the beginning of realignment, many Democrats do not want President Barack Hussein Obama to run for re-election.  He may choose not to.  But if he insists, inviting further destruction of the Democrat Party in 2012, he may discover Democrat knives in his back designed to force him to resign.  That would make the vice-president president.

A surprising bit of post-election news has cheered Republicans and dismayed many Democrats.  Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal, is planning to run for House Minority Leader.

Ms. Pelosi was widely expected to resign from the House following the drubbing her troops took in the midterm elections.  This is what her predecessors as Speaker, Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, and Newt Gingrich, R-Ga, did after they stepped down.

It would seem especially prudent for Ms. Pelosi to follow their example, because she is the most unpopular figure in American politics today.  In a poll conducted in late October for NBC and the Wall Street Journal, only eight percent of independents approved of the job she was doing.

Some of the Democrats in the House who lost Nov. 2 have sent a letter to Ms. Pelosi urging her not to run for minority leader.

Meanwhile, Republicans are almost giddy at the prospect of having Ms. Pelosi as the face of Democrats in the House for two more years.  Bill Kristol of the conservative Weekly Standard wrote a tongue in cheek editorial endorsing her.  Staffers at the Republican National Committee hung a huge “Hire Pelosi” banner from the top of their building.

This is my 11th HFR since I started filling in for Jack.  It’s the first in which the political news is genuinely half full.  But even in the bad news there is good.

We saw a wave, a big wave, Tuesday.  But it wasn’t the tsunami many of us were expecting.

The news about the House of Representatives is certainly more than half full.  At this writing, Republicans have a net gain of 61 seats, with 10 races still undecided.

The bad news for Republicans is that Harry Reid is still the Senate Majority Leader.  Most of us are disappointed because Republicans gained “only” six seats in the Senate, instead of the eight or nine most pundits were predicting.

The good news about the Senate is that Harry Reid is still the Senate Majority Leader.

Democrats who didn’t drown in the Republican wave had to be dismayed by the news conference President Barack Obama held Wednesday before jetting off on his $200 million a day visit to India.

Particularly unhappy, I suspect, are the 12 Democrats in the Senate from states that voted Republican Tuesday who are up for re-election in 2012.

With Mr. Obama willing to make only cosmetic changes to his agenda, we’re headed for two years of gridlock.  The House will pass bills to repeal Obamacare and reduce the size of government.  These will be killed in the Senate or vetoed by the president.

But a clear choice will be established for 2012, for which the midterms were merely the preliminary bout.

An oxymoron is an apparent contradiction in terms, such as “deafening silence,” or “jumbo shrimp.”  Comedians like to cite “military intelligence,” “political courage,” and “business ethics” as other examples.

The oxymoron of 2010 is “mainstream media.”  The major news organizations are headed and staffed mostly by people who couldn’t be more detached from the attitudes, concerns and opinions of ordinary Americans, who they hold in contempt.

We are less than 100 hours from the most important midterm election in our history.

The outlook for the House ranges from rosy to Biblical. An Irish bookie already is paying off those who bet the Republicans will take the House.

What is perhaps a sign that he feels confident he’ll be the next Speaker, House Republican leader John Boehner will spend part of the final weekend before the election campaigning for Rich Iott.

While polling suggests the Republican wave is still building in the House, it seems to be receding in the Senate.

National Democrats must really be afraid of Marco Rubio to try this desperate ploy.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is all that remains of President Barack Obama’s original economic team.  Budget director Peter Orszag and Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, are long gone, and Lawrence Summers, chairman of the National Economic Council, plans to be back at Harvard in January.

Neil Barofsky wouldn’t be sad if Mr. Geithner were to depart too.

Who, you may ask, is Neil Barofsky?  And why should you care what he thinks?

In May of 2009, Democratic strategist James Carville published a book in which he predicted the election of Barack Obama as president presaged the “emergence of a Democratic majority that will last not four but 40 years.”

Democrats fear Mr. Carville may be off by 38 years.

“Democrats are previewing what promises to be a main line of argument if Republicans make strong gains in Congress,” wrote Jonathan Martin in the Webzine Politico Monday.  “Conservatives bought their way to power with a flood of spending by outside groups.”

“The denunciations of outside money by President Barack Obama began as a tool to rally the Democratic base before the Nov. 2 election,” Mr. Martin wrote.  “But in recent days it has morphed into something else: a main talking point to explain -- and fend off the recriminations over -- what many Washington Democrats assume will be a brutal election night.”

If Republicans take the House and gain seven or eight seats in the Senate, it’ll be a good idea for Democrats to have an explanation ready.  But the claim Democrats are being overwhelmed by spending from outside groups blends hypocrisy with hilarity, because most of the spending from outside groups is being done by unions on behalf of Democrats.

The headline on this story on the front page of the New York Times Thursday read: “Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region.”

It’s evident New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof didn’t read the story in his own paper before writing this column. When you want your commentary fact free, always think of the New York Times first.

Schadenfreude (taking joy from the discomfort of someone you dislike) is a sinful pleasure, but one to which most of us succumb from time to time.

The most delicious form of schadenfreude is when our enemies suffer as a result of a colossal, unforced error of their own.  This is why so many conservatives are taking so much pleasure in the hole National Public Radio has dug for itself.

I don’t believe this.  But if it’s true, then Democrats will have to advance the date of Doomsday on the Mayan calendar from December 21, 2012 to Nov. 2, 2010.

The CIA suffered one of its biggest setbacks on December 20, 2009, when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the CIA’s Afghanistan headquarters in Khost, along with four CIA officers, three security contractors, and a Jordanian intelligence officer.

Among those killed were the CIA station chief and an analyst from headquarters in Langley who reportedly was the agency’s foremost expert on al Qaida.  Six other CIA officers were injured in the blast.

The suicide bomber was Khalil Abu-Mulal al Balawi, a Jordanian doctor who the CIA thought was an informant for them, but who was really an agent of Tehrik i Taliban Pakistan, the main Pakistani Taliban group.

On Tuesday, CIA Director Leon Panetta told selected reporters an internal review found the CIA has been warned Mr. al Balawi’s loyalties were suspect, but the warnings were ignored.  The body count was so high because security procedures at the base in Khost also were ignored.

The main takeaway for me from Mr. Panetta’s briefing was his declaration that no one would be held accountable for the failures.  It was deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra might say.

Jonathan Allen of the Webzine Politico found a datum in the most recent Federal Elections Commission report which to me illustrates why politicians in Washington have gotten so out of touch with the concerns and opinions of their constituents.

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., is chairman of the House Transportation Committee.  He’s represented his northeastern Minnesota district since 1975.

Between June 22 and Sep. 30, Rep. Oberstar raised $233,102 for his re-election campaign.

Just $500 of that -- in a single donation from Jane Robbins of Pine City -- came from residents off his district.  Most of the rest came from political action committees in Washington.

We’re now just less than a week away from a midterm election in which GOP prospects range from pretty good to Biblical.  So it’s time for a TTP Clairvoyance Contest. 

What do you win besides bragging rights if you win?

Not much.  The winner will be announced on Friday night at the rendezvous, and I will buy him or her lunch on Saturday.  If you don’t attend the rendezvous, I’ll send you a coupon for Burger King.  Maybe.  Be there or be square.

If you kill them, they will die.  Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times reports the troop surge in Afghanistan is starting to work.

There is a simpler way than Stuxnet to stick it to the Iranians, says Spengler.

Joe Miller is losing altitude in Alaska faster than a 747 struck by a heat-seeking missile.

The publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal said: “Angle mops the floor with Reid.”

You don’t need me to tell you there aren’t any rocket scientists in Congress.  But that might change.

So far, the person most thrilled with the attacks on Karl Rove is Karl Rove.

In what may be the unkindest cut of all, Politico compares the Obama/Democrat campaign in 2010 to the McCain campaign in 2008.

The Member of Congress most responsible for our current economic troubles may pay for his sins in November.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.  No one insisted more strongly on the lax lending standards at the heart of the subprime mortgage crisis.  No one fought more vigorously against oversight of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), whose bankruptcies triggered the economic collapse.

Rep. Frank has a reputation for arrogance President Obama might envy, a product of representing a safe Democratic district since 1981.  But he seemed flustered and defensive in a radio debate Monday (10/11) with Sean Bielat.

A major in the Marine Corps Reserve who holds two masters degrees and is a former program manager for the iRobot Corporation, Mr. Bielat is one of the most impressive Republican challengers this year.

In an ordinary year, this wouldn’t matter much.  But this is no ordinary year.