Take it away, Mr. Sullivan...

What we're seeing is, to my mind, ominous. It's increasingly clear that the debt hangover of the last decade, combined with the financial crisis and the full and growing impact of China and India on global labor markets may well mean a long, grim, endless employment recession. At the same time, we have an opposition party that believes in torture, pre-emptive war, Greater Israel, and the stigmatization of Muslim-Americans. We have a party that not only has no serious solutions to any of our current problems (what climate change?) but wants to ratchet up the war on Jihadist terror in such a way that will embolden the Islamists, give our enemies a fantastic p.r. gift, conflate all Muslims as potential terrorists and elect a half-term former governor on the basis of her proud ignorance. And then what? Over to you, Mr Netanyahu. A global religious war is on - and coming to your neighborhood soon.

If your alarm bells aren't ringing, they should be. And if you are not increasingly motivated to support the president who alone stands in the way of these ominous portents, then you will have no one to blame when these fear-mongering demagogues get back into power.

As the GOP descends into rank bigotry