*A really scary thought. Washington Post columnist Jeffrey Rosen has come up with the most frightening solution I’ve seen to Barack Obama’s increasing unpopularity. He suggests that our Teleprompter-in-Chief use the first opening on the Supreme Court to appoint (I guarantee you aren’t ready for this) himself to fill the vacancy. Think of it: In one awful move, we’d be faced with Joe Biden as president and Barack Obama making law for the rest of his life.
*What’s UUP with this? Want to see a frightening financial chart? Look up the one that tracks futures contracts on the U.S. dollar. It’s called UUP and, except for the last couple of weeks, it pretty much looks like the “down” part of the scariest roller-coaster ride you’ve ever been on. It sometimes seems as though the only thing helping the U.S. dollar is that most other currencies are worse.
*And speaking of other currencies. A friend of mine had a great comment about my column last week on the havoc that’s occurring in Europe, thanks to the financial problems facing the PIGS. “The Euro isn’t a currency,” he explained. “It’s an experiment.”
*The CFR sounds an alarm. Here’s yet another warning about our own out-of-control spending. “We’ve reached a point now where there’s an intimate link between our solvency and our national security. What’s so discouraging is that our domestic politics don’t seem to be up to the challenge.” Who’s the Cassandra who issued this dire summary? None other than Richard Haass, president of the insiders’ ultimate power club, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). When the CFR speaks, you know official Washington had better listen.
—Chip Wood