The National Review and it’s stable of Right Wing ideologues are amazing. These characters live in a world of their own, which provides them a refuge from history and the present. They will be at the forefront of the obstructionism we shall see in the upcoming years as they do everything in their power to thwart the new Administration’s initiatives. For now, it seems they will be content to complain about anything and everything associated with the new President, Democrats, the Left, environmentalists, and realists. This group’s railings would actually be fairly humorous except that there is obviously a market ingesting this swill and accepting it as the unvarnished truth. Now that’s a frightening thing to contemplate! A quick glance at Today’s Web postings reveals the following enlightening information provided by their staff of deep thinkers.We have David Limbaugh complaining:

They are poor winners. Leftists are always lecturing Republicans and conservatives on the importance of civility and bipartisanship yet revealing, whether winner or losing, that they are the ones who need lessons in manners and collegiality. If you aren’t convinced of the left’s nonpareil arrogance and nastiness from observing their behavior toward President Bush and Vice President Cheney for the past eight years, then contrast the behavior of Mr. Bush’s staff leaving office and that of Mr. Clinton’s, who literally trashed the White House like juvenile delinquents. Fast-forwarding to this week, did you see Obama supporters booing President Bush at the inauguration, singing, "Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye"? Pure class. The Washington Times reported that these same Obama supporters mocked Mr. Cheney "with derisive laughter when he appeared on huge TV screens by the Capitol grounds, rolling down a ramp in a wheelchair after suffering a back injury moving out of his Naval Observatory home. ‘Good riddance!’ one man yelled." Obama also couldn’t resist a jab at the knuckle-dragging science-averse, apparently for failing to swallow the left’s uncompromising faith-based opinion, which has come under increasing scientific challenge (31,000-plus scientists and counting), that human activities are leading to apocalyptic global warming. "We will restore science to its rightful place," he said. I assume "its rightful place" is in service to leftist propaganda.

Michael Novak writes:

At the pre-inauguration concert on the National Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial, dark red banners on the temporary stands of the amphitheater built for the occasion, with adulatory crowds packed into them, brought back ugly newsreel images from my childhood. The feeling expressed by many who were there and others who watched on television reveals a strain of messianism that ill becomes a democratic republic.

Rich Lowery psychoanalyzes the President and informs us:

Obama imagines himself a colossus standing bestride the political world.

His inaugural prose has been justly panned.

The always gracious Mark Steyn brays:

How dazzling is President Obama? So dazzling that he didn’t merely give a dazzling inaugural speech. Any old timeserving hack could do that. Instead, he had the sheer genius to give a flat dull speech full of the usual shopworn boilerplate. Brilliant! At a stroke, he not only gently lowered the expectations of those millions of Americans and billions around the world for whom his triumphant ascendancy is the only thing that gives their drab little lives any meaning, but also emphasized continuity by placing his unprecedented incandescent megastar cool squarely within the tradition of squaresville yawneroo white middle-aged plonking mediocrities who came before him.

No less a luminary than Mona Charen dissected the Inauguration Speech and informs us:

Naturally, the parts of the speech the commentators seemed to like the most were actually hackneyed political evergreens. “We will restore science to its rightful place”—who moved it?—“and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its costs.” Aren’t we supposed to be “putting away childish” ideas like getting something for nothing? Our health-care system is heavily technologically weighted compared with others—that’s one of the reasons it’s so expensive". and "He proclaimed that those who hold onto power through “silencing dissent” were on “the wrong side of history.” That’s a relief. And there was a coded message for conservatives in his call for the nation to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again . . .” Those were almost exactly the lyrics of a song from the 1936 musical Swing Time, and they were sung by Ginger Rogers, a noted Republican."

Kathryn Jean Lopez lectures us on the anniversary of Roe v Wade:

After all, Barack Obama, who has demonstrated a tolerance for infanticide, is president of the United States. The Speaker of the House is a Catholic who makes up her own theology with hubris. I could go on: Obama has promised a sweepingly radical piece of legislation that would threaten the very existence of many religious medical entities that our country depends on, striking a blow to religious liberty."

On the same subject, Frederica Mathewes-Green, delivers this truly exceptional line of thought:

But the time is coming when a younger generation will be in charge, and they may well see abortion differently. They could see it not as “a woman’s choice” but as a form of state-sanctioned violence inflicted on their generation. It was their brothers and sisters who died; anyone under the age of 36 could have been aborted, and somewhere around a fourth or a fifth of all babies are. A younger generation might feel a strange kinship with the brothers and sisters, classmates and coworkers, who are missing.

The NRO Editorial Staff weighs in on the Stimulus Plan:

We now have a much better idea of what President Obama and the Democrats mean by “stimulus.” They do not mean those policies that will provide the greatest boost to economic activity. They mean those policies that will stimulate the economy within the narrow bounds of what partisanship and ideology will allow, plus some policies that are wholly unrelated to economic stimulus.""Party allegiances and ideology have prevented the Democrats from considering better, more effective tax cuts. The Republican Study Committee has put together a superb tax-relief proposal, and all of its ideas should be under consideration.""Got that? The top priority of the man who represents “hope over fear” will be an attempt to spook the public into supporting a liberal wish list disguised as a stimulus bill."

As to the criminality of the last eight years:

President Barack Obama has called for an end to "the petty grievances" and "recriminations" of Washington. John Conyers intends to find out if the new president really means it. Mr. Conyers, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has spent years gearing up for a Bush administration witch hunt. Backed by a mob of congressional liberals, outside groups, and the New York Times, he’s counting on this new president to play along with payback. Consider it the first test of Mr. Obama’s promise of a new civility. Mr. Conyers’s own notion of civility has included holding no less than 70 hearings into Bush programs. Last year, he and 55 House Democrats demanded the Justice Department appoint a special prosecutor to conduct a criminal investigation into Bush interrogation policies. This year, they expect the incoming administration to finally give them satisfaction.Mr. Conyers also just introduced legislation to establish a Soviet-style "truth commission" to investigate (for starters) interrogations, wiretapping, Valerie Plame, Iraq intelligence, and the firing of U.S. attorneys. The body would be vested with a big budget and subpoena power. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with no hint of a smirk, explained her party had a duty to the "truth." Truth commissions and special prosecutors are just the beginning of the left’s demands. Congress is mulling document requests from agencies Mr. Obama now runs. They want the president to pressure Justice attorneys to produce prosecutions out of current investigations, like that of destroyed CIA tapes. They are using Mr. Obama’s own words to push the president. America can’t reclaim its "moral authority" without a commission, says Mr. Conyers. It’s necessary to "move forward," says the ACLU.

Jim Geraghty expounds upon all things Obama and it’s obvious he’s a fan:

Those poor folks. They don’t realize that all Obama statements, even executive orders, come with expiration dates. In the case of Lynn, the lobbyist-ban pledge lasted all of 24 hours.Surprising very few of us, we see that once in office, Obama is more open about his gun-control efforts at WhiteHouse.gov:Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. I Would Like To Believe You, Mr. President. And yet, as one without HopeTM, I’m left shaking my head, hearing a lot of big promises from a guy who didn’t keep a bunch of them when he was in the Senate.The "petty grievances" would presumably include booing the outgoing president. And blog posts that are entitled, "Let the joyous news be spread, the wicked old witch at last is dead" (I searched for this link, as NRO didn’t have one, I found the phrase at Huffpo, in reference to NYT making the opeds free once more, but little else) and "it’s over, bitch" (they may have gotten this off of America Blog’s Twitter feed) would seem to be not in keeping with this new spirit. I’d like to believe it when Obama is saying, "we’re all going to hold ourselves to a higher standard, now" but it comes across to my ears as, "now, you guys on the other side aren’t allowed to be petty and criticize me the way my side criticized your guy."I’d love to believe it. But as a senator, Obama had little or no role in eliminating wasteful or ineffective programs. [Rereading it, I realize that the entire defense budget doesn’t meet the criteria he lays out.] His work was always about adding, expanding, broadening, making government bigger and more expensive.