To expect the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own fate.

Contemporary politics is all about phony energy, about running around slamming doors for the sake of it-or, more to the point, opening them and tossing through a huge sack of taxpayer dollars.

It is surely only a matter of time before some federal judge finds the Constitution unconstitutional.

The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.

The rules in this new 'post-partisan' era are pretty simple: If the Democratic Party wants it, it's 'stimulus.' If the Republican Party opposes it, it's 'politics' - as in headlines like this: 'Obama Urges GOP To Keep Politics To A Minimum On Stimulus.' These are serious times: As the president says, it's the worst economic crisis since the Thirties. So politicians need to put politics behind them and immediately lavish $4.19 billion on his community-organizing pals at the highly inventive 'voter registration' group ACORN for 'neighborhood stabilization activities.

But a society that has nothing to die for has nothing to live for . . .

CNN? Oh, that's that network with Larry King, who, like the Son of Sam, is a native of Brooklyn. Used to be owned by Ted Turner, who, like the Cincinnati Strangler, is a native of Cincinnati. Now part of Time Warner, founded by the Warner Brothers, the oldest of whom, Harry Warner, like many Auschwitz guards, was a native of Poland.