Thanks once again to Robert Stacy and Smitty for the Rule Five callout!  Be sure to check out their extensive Rule Five compendium at the link.

So, is the Obama Presidency over?  Given the explosion in debt, the vast overreaches in executive authority and the lip-service approach to basic individual liberties, this Administration may not be “over” for decades.  Reason.com author Ira Stoll has some thoughts on the topic.  Excerpt:

We all will be living with the effects of his presidency for many years to come, long after the Obamas have retired to New York City and Martha’s Vineyard. Senator Rubio and Mr. Todd look at the president’s sagging poll numbers and see an impotent lame duck. But the reality is that even if President Obama doesn’t accomplish another new thing in the next two years, the actions he has already taken make him one of the most consequential presidents ever.

Over? Far from it.

The federal debt held by the public has grown on President Obama’s watch to about $12.6 trillion from about $6.8 trillion. The Obama presidency won’t be “over” until that nearly $6 trillion in new debt is either paid back or defaulted on. As a percentage of gross domestic product, the federal debt held by the public has soared to 73.8 percent today from 43.8 percent before he took office. The Obama presidency won’t be “over” until that figure returns to the status quo ante. Don’t hold your breath.

Let’s be honest, at least amongst ourselves:  That figure (debt) will never return to the status quo ante.  It is the nature of government to grow ever larger and more intrusive, and our Republic has very likely reached a tipping point.  We may not be able to undo the coming fiscal calamity without hyper-inflation or repudiation of the Imperial Federal debt, both courses of action which would effectively destroy the United States as the leading economic power in the world.

There is a third option, of course.  It may not – may not – be too late to grow our way out of this.  But increasingly it looks like a return to fiscal sanity and a responsible monetary policy on the part of the Imperial Federal government is out of the question.

A lot hinges on the next two elections, and a lot can happen in the next two years; but republics rarely reverse course once started down this path.

And that path tends to end with tyranny.

Aaaannd the Obama slide into lame-duckery continues – nay, accelerates.  Excerpt:

President Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 41 percent, a majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of foreign policy issues, he has lost support from the Hispanic community and Americans actually think his administration is less competent than the Bush White House post-Hurricane Katrina, according to a new survey from the Wall Street Journal and NBC News.

In short, the poll is nothing but bad news for the president.

The survey would appear to be so bad, in fact, that NBC News’ Chuck Todd said Tuesday that the poll basically means the public has declared the Obama presidency to be over.

This is what we get for putting a Kelly Girl in the White House.

While I did not vote for Barack Obama (a choice which I think recent history has proved correct) and consider him the least competent President of my lifetime – a lifetime, I hasten to point out, which has included Presidents Nixon and Carter – I do not ascribe to the “he is a closet Muslim/fifth columnist/Manchurian candidate” school of thought.  I do think he is easily the least capable man to sit in the White House since Andrew Johnson – maybe since James Buchanan.

There is an old saw that state “never ascribe to malicious intent what may more easily be attributed to incompetence.”  Barack Obama, accurately described as a product of the Chicago Machine, a Hyde Park liberal and a disciple of Saul Alinsky, is incompetent and what’s worse, he surrounds himself with incompetents.  (As evidence I present our current SecState.)

It’s possible that in another twenty years, with the seasoning that comes with age and experience, he may have made a better President.  Then again, he may not have.  But now, all we can do is hope for his replacement to be someone capable of undoing much of the previous eight years.

Once more into the workday breach, dear friends, once more!

Also once more, our thanks to Robert Stacy and Smitty (and Wombat-socho) for the Rule Five links.  Danke!  Vielen danke!

This just in from the always-worth-reading Dr. Victor Davis Hanson: War Was Interested in Obama.  Excerpt:

Leon Trotsky probably did not quite write the legendary aphorism that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” But whoever did, you get the point that no nation can always pick and choose when it wishes to be left alone.

Barack Obama, however, never quite realized that truth, and so just declared that “the world is less violent than it has ever been.” He must have meant less violent in the sense that the bad guys are winning and as they do, the violence wanes — sort of like Europe around March 1941, when all was relatively quiet under the new continental Reich.

One of Obama’s talking points in the 2012 campaign included a boast that he had “ended” the war in Iraq by bringing home every U.S. soldier that had been left to ensure the relative quiet and stability after the successful Petraeus surge. In the world of Obama, a war can be declared ended because he said so, given that no Americans were any longer directly involved. (Remind the ghosts of the recently beheaded in now al Qaeda-held Mosul that the war ended there in 2011.)

Iraq is in flames, as is “lead from behind” Libya, as is “red line” Syria, and as are those places where an al Qaeda “on the run” has migrated. Had Obama been commander in chief in 1940, he would have assured us that the wars in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France were “over” — as they were in a sense for those who lost them, but as they were not for those next in line.

Someone once said “history may not repeat, but it frequently rhymes.”  That may be the case here, not just in Mesopotamia but also in Europe, where Vladimir Putin is loudly proclaiming he has no territorial ambitions beyond the Sudetenland Crimea.

Predictions are notoriously hard to make, especially when they’re about the future – but it’s hard to look at the state of global affairs today and see anything much good coming out of the next decade or so.