Comments by knowledgeable individuals on topics near and far . . . Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, on Democratic plans for socialized medicine: “We should start over. We’re headed down the wrong path.“ Author and Hoover Institution research fellow Shelby Steele: “The Sotomayor nomination commits the cardinal sin of identity politics: It seeks to elevate people more for the political currency of their gender and ethnicity than for their individual merit. (Here, too, is the ugly faithlessness in minority merit that always underlies such maneuverings.) [Barack] Obama is promising one thing and practicing another, using his interracial background to suggest an America delivered from racial corruption even as he practices a crude form of racial patronage. From America’s first black president, and a man promising the ‘new,‘ we get a Supreme Court nomination that is both unoriginal and hackneyed.“

Does it make any sense, what Sarah Palin has done? Little that is happening these days seems to make much sense, particularly regarding the Republicans. But I mean, just up and resigning as governor of Alaska? All the experts say it’s the wrong thing to do. That it sends the wrong message—giving up on the only statewide elected post she’s ever held. That it confirms she really is the ditz they have suggested since John McCain vaulted her to fame.

ROSS MACKENZIE Times-Dispatch Columnist A4th of July conversation between Dude—a teenager—and his Uncle Sam . . . Yo, Uncle. Wasup? Good morning, Dude. What am I doing? I’m getting into my suit for the parade. What’re you gonna be in a parade for? They gonna have a lot of hot chicks and cool floats? I don’t know about that, Dude. But I do know there will be many military people and ordinary citizens—and brass bands playing Sousa marches and songs about America. It’s our annual celebration of independence and liberty.

Brief comments on a variety of topics currently in the news . . . .

• With the Obama administration springing Guantanamo-housed terrorists and, e.g., funding Hamas-dominated Gaza to the tune of $900 million (etc.), how far we have come from George Bush’s admonition: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.“

You are there—sipping green tea with President Obama in this imaginary one-on-one . . . Sir, in your Cairo address to Islam you were the first Western potentate since Napoleon to embrace the Islamist narrative dividing humanity into warring religious camps: Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc. That implicitly supports re-establishment of the caliphate—

Further quotations on the economy . . . Amity Shlaes, senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations, in her new book, The Forgotten Man: a New History of the Great Depression: “From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great . . . . It was a period of a power struggle between two sectors of the economy, both containing a mix of evil and virtue. The public sector and the private sector competed relentlessly for advantage. At the beginning, in the 1920s, the private sector ruled. By the end, when World War II began, it was the public sector that was dominant. The contrast was a brutal one, fought across the land.“

President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court and promptly left town. The preceding week hardly could go down as a high point for him or his administration—but maybe, in certain ways, as a period of personal growth. Time for a break. Think about it. The week had featured these items on an incomplete list, most related one way or another to national security:

Our fabulous president said the other day, “I will not rest until the dream of health care reform is achieved in the United States of America.“ What do you think about that? As we all know he’s a dreamer, and on this one he’s dreaming bigtime—or smoking something. His is a protracted exercise in wishful thinking. You don’t believe in reform? You don’t believe our health care system needs reforming?

Additional stops on a random walk through a garden of issues currently in the news . . .

• A study of student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test (NAEP) since the early 1970s reaches dismal conclusions. On a scale of 500, test scores by today’s high schoolers average a pitiful one point higher in reading and just two points higher in math.

A grab-bag of quotations on subjects currently in the news . . . President Obama, with reporters during his first flight aboard Air Force One—dressed in a flight jacket bearing his name and the presidential seal: “I’ve got my spiffy jacket, so I thought I’d come and show it off. What do you think about this spiffy ride?“

The story goes that in the 1950s, because it couldn’t determine what Dwight Eisenhower was saying in his tangled thicket of words during press conferences, The New York Times started printing transcripts and letting its readers figure out his meanings. Suppose, just to be supposin’, you were part of the White House press corps and were approved to ask the first question at the president’s next press conference. Here’s an imaginary transcript . . .

David Letterman updated the old game of “Can You Top This?“ with his reverse lists of the 10 best or worst or most bizarre—whatevers. Here’s a listing of 16 outrages from Barack Obama and his two-month-old administration, each new outrage seemingly topping—outdoing in idiocy and insult—the one that went before . . . (16) Naming as treasury secretary, with oversight of the Internal Revenue Service, a man who had failed to pay his income taxes. Were Timothy Geithner a mere IRS hireling, his tax issues would have landed him in the unemployment queues at light-speed.

Herewith some questions about contrasts and double standards—and how the leftists comprising the nameless “they” who rule the world would react to what Barack Obama is doing if Obama were George Bush. For instance . . . If Obama were Bush, what would their reaction be to the president’s failure—even now—to submit a plan to salvage the nation’s banks?

With the world’s wealth halved and Barack Obama the first president to try his hand at stock-brokering (“Buying stocks is a potentially good deal”), herewith some back channel chatter amid the static and the buzz . . .

Type_webhead_here On precisely the day Barack Obama signed into law the most gargantuan economic measure in the nation’s peacetime history (White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel termed it “the most major, sweeping, comprehensive legislation as it relates to economic activity ever”)—at almost precisely the moment of his penstrokes—the stock market’s hope balloon went “bang!“