VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: IGNORE OBAMA’S SPEECH:

We all know what is coming in 2012 — the most well-financed, Wall Street-subsidized, vitriolic camping in modern memory, in which Obama’s rivals will be metaphorically reduced to caricatures of racist, selfish, and cruel nativists. The 2011 Tucson speech will have about as much resonance with Obama’s impending campaign style as the 2004 oration affected his 2004-9 political behavior. . . .

And finally, why not an iota of presidential follow-up when in nanoseconds Obama’s own progressive supporters returned to form and took up the old successful hate tropes? Rep. Cohen (D-TN) was soon comparing conservative opponents to Nazis in their Goebbels-like propaganda that likewise would, we were to believe, result in a Holocaust-like denial of basic human compassion. Columnists in Slate were back to the old Jonathan Chait-style (“I hate George Bush. There, I said it”) of declaring their unabashed loathing for political opponents (“Why I Loathe my Connecticut Senator”). All that was left was the reemergence from his Atlanta peace center of a smiling Jimmy Carter, quoting scripture as he might yet again remind us that the elder Bush was “effeminate,” Vice President Cheney was a “militant,” the younger Bush was the “worst” president, and Israel is an “apartheid” state.

Running dogs, I think they used to call them.

TODAY ONLY: An exercise bike sale.

THE GREAT 2010 CASHOUT: Evan Bayh becomes a hedge-fund lobbyist. Sometimes I get the feeling that our political class sees things unraveling and is trying to grab what it can, while it can. Of course, it’s pretty hard to tell that from simple unrestrained greed. . . .

I’M PRETTY SURE THAT “TARGETED INVESTMENTS” TRANSLATES AS “more taxpayer money diverted to my cronies.” I don’t think that’s what this country needs, or wants. It’s probably what Obama will offer at the State of the Union, though.

“I’M NOT A RACIST, I know people who voted for Obama.”

WITH CLIMATE BILL DEAD, Obama Faces Pressure From Greens. And, probably, pressure for green . . . .

TED KOPPEL: 30 years after the Iran hostage crisis, we’re still fighting Reagan’s war. Um, wasn’t Jimmy Carter President when the Hostage Crisis began? And if he’d taken decisive action instead of dithering, we probably wouldn’t still be fighting this war, and doing badly enough that supporters of the current Democratic President are trying to blame Reagan. Instead, Carter temporized, much as Obama has been doing on numerous fronts. I don’t remember Koppel sounding bellicose back then, but of course I was young and might have missed it.

On the other hand, I can’t help but think that to a lot of Democrats, heating things up with Iran now might seem to have short-term political benefits. It would distract people from what’s going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and, for a while, at least, in the American economy.

AMERICA’S TOP fitness model.

“A lot of times they want you to smile while you’re holding a squat for two minutes. It’s burning, and you’re trying to keep your form,” Strother says. “Sometimes you forget to smile.”

I pretty much always forget to smile during my workouts. On the other hand, I was next to Jessica Putnam on the stairclimber the other day, and she wasn’t smiling either, just sipping steadily from a gallon jug of water as she went on and on and on. But then, there were no cameras present.

VIOLENCE AND RACIAL EPITHETS TO overrun Sunday television.

BREAKING: FoxNews Hires Keith Olbermann.

SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? Here Comes $4 Gas, $5 Cups of Coffee.

SIGH.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on business, home-office, and tax-prep software.

LASER INCIDENTS INVOLVING AIRCRAFT are on the rise.

POWER LINE: Jeffrey Immelt, Obama’s Pet CEO.

REDESIGNING the Gadsden Flag.

ROBERT HEINLEIN AND THOMAS JEFFERSON ON the real meaning of political parties.

JOHN HINDERAKER: THE LEFT’S TUCSON STRATEGY, STAGE TWO. Glenn Beck accurately quotes France Fox Piven’s calls for violence, then gets called evil when she gets “threats.”

Glenn Beck has pulled back the curtain on this disgraceful specimen by quoting her accurately. No one has identified any statements he has made about Piven that are incorrect, or claims that he has in any way threatened her. Unlike Piven, Beck is a staunch opponent of political violence. But the mis-named Center for Constitutional Rights–another Orwellian touch–thinks there is such a thing as too much free speech. They want Fox News to shut Beck up because of the “sheer quantity” of Beck’s references to Piven.

They can take anything except honest discussion.

LITTLE MISS ATTILA WILL BE A GUEST ON DATECHGUY’S RADIO SHOW, at 9 PM Eastern tonight. You can listen live right here.

IS THERE A GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS IN THE WORKS?

TEA PARTY CANDIDATE JACK KIMBALL elected to head New Hampshire GOP. And note the picture Politico chose for this story. No hidden agenda there, Politico! No, really, the agenda isn’t hidden at all . . . .

SCREENSHOT OF THE DAY, from Memeorandum.

Kinda sums up the whole “new civility” thing, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: Reader Allen S. Thorpe responds to Gail Collins: “Now if we can get through the SOTU without the President insulting the Supreme Court, . . .”

MORE NEWS THAT DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE.

In September 2010 Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was scheduled to speak at Penn Valley Community College in Kansas City.

At some point, wearing black clothes and a bullet-proof vest, 22 year-old Casey Brezik bolted out of a classroom, knife in hand, and slashed the throat of a dean. As he would later admit, he confused the dean with Nixon.

The story never left Kansas City. It is not hard to understand why. Knives lack the political sex appeal of guns, and even Keith Olbermann would have had a hard time turning Brezik into a Tea Partier.

Indeed, Brezik seems to have inhaled just about every noxious vapor in the left-wing miasma: environmental extremism, radical Islam, anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism and Christophobia, among others.

Read the whole thing.

BALDING MEN worry about marketability. This was all explained in The Simpsons.

THE DRESSMAKING SKILLS might have been a clue. Or, hey, maybe not.