What Obama is saying is simple: The United States has become Too Big To Fail.

America may be in a dour condition, but it is not going to elect a dour president.

Making recess appointments when the Senate isn't in recess is neither rational nor moderate. It's a raw misuse of executive power by a president whose love of government is his most vulnerable spot with the electorate.

Over the next decade, cities and states across America will be compelled to tighten their belts as the really big bills - the pension bills they cannot afford - come due. They'll have to go after existing contracts with current workers.

The real story of the Ground Zero mosque is that the project only became feasible because of the appalling and astonishing fecklessness of the officials who were charged with the reconstruction of the site and the neighborhood all the way back in 2001.

The problem is that borrowing money to pay back more borrowed money that will oblige you in the future to borrow even more money doesn't sound kosher. Because it isn't.

Obama has seen to the passage of the most radical legislation in recent American history and so-called 'progressives' should be thanking him for it - even as many of the rest of us rear in horror from its implications.