When Obama's economic advisers - a greater group of schlemiels would be hard to find - warn that failure to raise the limit will trigger default and horrific consequences for the global economy, Republicans should reply that if this is so, tell it to your president and get him to approve the spending cuts along with the debt-limit increase.

In the real world, banks hang onto their money for fear of making bad loans, no matter how many bailouts or stimulus packages Washington passes.

In Canada the cancer death rate is 16% higher than in the U.S. because of rationing of medical care. It takes an eight week wait to get radiation therapy for cancer.

The opposing party rarely causes so much angst as does one's own.

Americans will gladly support their president when he attacks nations that sponsor or harbor terrorists. We will even back him in a preemptive war against a country that might attack us. But when we start sending troops around the world to stabilize nations that, if left to disintegrate, might become breeding grounds for terror, it's a step too far for most Americans.

Socialist countries throughout the world love to lower retirement ages to make people prematurely dependent on the government. But we should move in the opposite direction. In the long run, indexing retirement to life expectancy will yield enormous revenues to the system, far more than a one-shot increase in the age in the current legislative cycle.

Obama does not believe in individual upward mobility. He would penalize it, tax it, regulate it, inveigh against it and disincentivize it. We will be like salmon swimming upstream to mate. We will overcome the currents, the waterfall, the rocks and the predators, and will grapple our way up the stream. Then, at the top of the waterfall will stand Obama the Bear, waiting to scoop us up and have us for dinner. The taxman cometh.